Reemployment Bonuses in the Unemployment Insurance System : Evidence from Three Field Experiments

During the 1980s, the federal government sponsored social experiments to determine whether or not offers of financial bonuses persuaded recipients of unemployment insurance to return to work sooner. A number of experimental designs were tried and some clear results were seen. While policy makers so far have chosen not to implement such bonus offers, the issue of how to increase active job search among UI recipients remains an issue, and bonus offers constitute one of only a handful of program options at their disposal that might achieve that goal.

In this volume, a select group of UI researchers describes the motivation for and the design, implementation, and impacts of UI bonus experiments administered in Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Washington. They also describe the benefits and costs of the various experimental treatments for the government as a whole, the UI system in particular, claimants' earnings, and the overall net benefits to society. This volume analyzes experiments that are virtually unique for social policy research (i.e., multiple experiments with similar designs that enable comparison of results of experiments conducted in different locations and different social contexts), as well as the movement from experiment to policy by considering impacts on nonparticipants and explicit benefit-cost analysis.