U. S. regional business cycles and the natural rate of unemployment

Howard Wall and Gylfi Zoega

Review, 2004, vol. 86, issue Jan, 23-32

Abstract: Estimates of the natural rate of unemployment are important in many macroeconomic models used by economists and policy advisors. This paper shows how such estimates might benefit from closer attention to regional developments. Regional business cycles do not move in lockstep, and greater dispersion among regions can affect estimates of the natural rate of unemployment. There is microeconomic evidence that employers are more reluctant to cut wages than they are to raise them. Accordingly, the relationship between wage inflation and vacancies is convex: An increase in vacancies raises wage inflation at an increasing rate. The authors? empirical results are consistent with this and indicate that, if all else had remained constant, the reduction in the dispersion of regional unemployment rates between 1982 and 2000 would have meant a 2-percentage-point drop in the natural rate of aggregate unemployment.

Keywords: Unemployment; Regional economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
https://files.stlouisfed.org/files/htdocs/publications/review/04/01/wall.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: U. S. regional business cycles and the natural rate of unemployment (2003)
Working Paper: REGIONAL BUSINESS CYCLES AND THE NATURAL RATE OF UNEMPLOYMENT (2002)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fip:fedlrv:y:2004:i:jan:p:23-32:n:v.86no.1

Access Statistics for this article

Review is currently edited by Juan M. Sanchez

More articles in Review from Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Scott St. Louis ().