ZEW/NBER Trans-Atlantic Public Economics Seminar

Sponsored by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and the Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW) the next Trans-Atlantic Public Economics Seminar takes place in Mannheim on June 13-15, 2016.

The conference will focus on positive and normative studies of social insurance programmes including unemployment insurance, disability insurance, social security, and medical insurance. A large and increasing fraction of government budgets are allocated to these programmes. Their design varies substantially across countries and over time. What effects have these programmes had on individual and firm behaviour as well as market outcomes, including layoff rates, labour supply and demand, length of unemployment spells, quality of worker-job matches, volatility of consumption, savings rates, retirement ages, health expenditures and the resulting health outcomes? What can we say about the consequences of plausible modifications to these programmes?