Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/257040 
Year of Publication: 
2019
Citation: 
[Journal:] Economies [ISSN:] 2227-7099 [Volume:] 7 [Issue:] 4 [Article No.:] 108 [Publisher:] MDPI [Place:] Basel [Year:] 2019 [Pages:] 1-17
Publisher: 
MDPI, Basel
Abstract: 
The impact of economic fluctuations on the total unemployment rate is widely studied, however, with respect to age- and gender-specific unemployment, this relationship is not so well examined. We apply the gap version of Okun's law, aiming to estimate youth unemployment rate sensitivity to output deviations from its potential level. Additionally, we aim to compare whether men or women have a higher equilibrium unemployment rate when output is at the potential level. Contrary to most studies on age- and gender-specific Okun's coefficients, which assume that the effect of output on unemployment is homogenous, we allow a different effect to occur, depending on the output gap's sign (positive/negative). The focus of the analysis is on 28 EU countries over the period of 2000-2018. The model is estimated by least squares dummy variable estimator (LSDV), using Prais-Winsten standard errors. We did not find evidence that higher equilibrium unemployment rates are more typical for men or for women. The estimates clearly show the equilibrium level of youth unemployment to be well above that of total unemployment, and this conclusion holds for both genders. We assess greater youth unemployment sensitivity to negative output shock, rather than to positive output shock, but when we take confidence intervals into consideration, this conclusion becomes less obvious.
Subjects: 
economic fluctuations
European Union
gender
Okun&#x2019
s law
youth unemployment
JEL: 
E24
E32
J16
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by Logo
Document Type: 
Article

Files in This Item:
File
Size





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.