Data and Code for "Disemployment Effects of Unemployment Insurance: A Meta-Analysis"

We systematically review studies of how unemployment benefits affect unemploy- ment duration. Statistically significant findings are eight times more likely to be published. Correcting for publication bias cuts the average elasticity by a third. Meta-analysis is a data-driven way to aggregate estimates across policy contexts and generalize sufficient statistics methods to compute the global optimal policy. Although existing consumption drop-based approaches typically imply an optimal replacement rate near zero, our corrected estimates imply an optimal replacement rate of 28% in the US. We are unable to reject the hypothesis that the “micro” elasticity is equal to the “macro” elasticity.