Study: Extending Unemployment Benefits Increased Unemployment by More than 3 Percentage Points

The National Review reports:

There has been much debate recently over the merits of extending unemployment benefits — last week, the Senate reached cloture on a bill to do so for three months, and will vote on the bill tonight. Even just among conservatives, the debate has been robust: AEI economist Michael Strain has argued, on the Corner, for extending the benefits, while others, such as Senator Rand Paul, have argued against such an extension.

But the debate hasn’t focused on the academic literature on the subject – including an important, surprising new paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), perhaps the most respected economic research institution in the world. (The NBER is the organization tasked with determining when recessions officially begin and end.) The study’s finding: “Most of the persistent increase in unemployment during the Great Recession can be accounted for by the unprecedented extensions of unemployment benefit eligibility.”