Optimal unemployment insurance and job stability.

Summary The thesis studies the links between recommendations from the literature on optimal unemployment insurance and the quality of jobs taken up by the unemployed. In particular, we focus on one dimension of job quality, namely job stability, in a context where short and even very short term contracts are expanding rapidly in France. Using theoretical models of job search and matching, we analyze how the characteristics of unemployment insurance affect the stability of the jobs taken up. The particularity of our analysis consists in integrating the way employees are influenced by the parameters of unemployment insurance. Indeed, if we want to analyze in a global way the impact of the parameters of the compensation system on the evolution of the unemployment rate, it is necessary to determine how these parameters influence the rate of exit from unemployment (analysis of the behavior of job seekers) but also how they affect the rate of entry into unemployment (analysis of the behavior of employees). To study the behavior of employees we consider that employees influence their probability of keeping their job by providing job retention efforts. In particular, we show that unemployed workers who leave unemployment quickly frequently return to low-stability jobs. Once employed, they make relatively few efforts to keep their job, thereby increasing their probability of returning to unemployment quickly. The final impact of a reduction in the amount of compensation on the evolution of unemployment is therefore indeterminate when employees are included in the analysis.