Extended benefits and the duration of UI spells: evidence from the New Jersey extended benefit program

This paper examines the impact on the duration of unemployment insurance receipt of a politically motivated program that offered 13 weeks of 'extended benefits' for 6 months in 1996. Using state-level data and individual administrative records from before, during and after the program, we find that it raised the fraction of claimants who exhausted their regular benefits by 1-3 percentage points. Had the program run long enough to affect claimants from the first day of their spell, the fraction exhausting would have risen by 7 percentage points, and the average recipient would have collected regular benefits for one extra week. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.