Some Remarks on Actual Unemployment Insurance Schemes

The article analyzes and compares the actual unemployment insurance schemes adopted in ten countries and their evolution over the 2001-2020 twenty-year period. The “OECD tax-benefit model” is a precious informative source for the analysis. The comparison between the UI schemes and the rationale that appears to have driven their designs is focused in particular on how the individual schemes tackle the trade-off between insurance and incentives. The main point from this comparison is the identification of two “benefit struc-tures”, which characterize in a deeply different way the actions for countering opportunistic behaviors within the ten countries. The article underlines issues and questions that the factual differences in the UI schemes leave open or con-tribute to raising.