Unemployment Rate Dispersion in Melbourne: The Regional Dimension

Robert Dixon and Muhammad Mahmood

No 983, Department of Economics - Working Papers Series from The University of Melbourne

Abstract: In this paper we examine unemployment rate dispersion across the (statistical) regions in the Melbourne metropolitan area. We find that the level of dispersion is positively correlated with the unemployment rate in all the regions taken together and that the ‘elasticity’ of dispersion with respect to the unemployment rate is unity, with the result that there is a tendency for the level of dispersion relative to the average unemployment rate to remain stationary over our sample period. We discuss the implications of this and show that the unemployment rate differences are persistent in the sense that the same areas exhibit relatively high (or low) unemployment rates over the whole of our sample period. We also estimate equilibrium rates of unemployment for the different regions in Melbourne and conjecture possible explanations for the differences in the level and in the persistence of the equilibrium rates.

Keywords: Regional; Unemployment; Disparities; Business; Cycle; Unemployment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E24 R11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 26 pages
Date: 2007
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-geo and nep-mac
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Related works:
Journal Article: Unemployment Rate Dispersion in Melbourne: The ‘Regional’ Dimension (2006)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mlb:wpaper:983

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