Unemployment Benefits Hang on “Fiscal Cliff” Deal

In today’s Daily Ticker, Hamilton Project Policy Director Adam Looney discusses the impact of an unemployment insurance (UI) benefit extension on employment incentives, noting that extended benefits added only between 0.1 and 0.5 percentage point to the unemployment rate in 2011. Washington Post's Brad Plumer in an article today on jobless benefits highlighted a new Hamilton Project paper, "The Impact of Fiscal Cliff Negotiations on American Jobs," in which Looney and Hamilton Project Director Michael Greenstone discuss the benefits of UI in more detail.