EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Okun coefficients and participation coefficients by age and gender

Andrew Evans ()
Additional contact information
Andrew Evans: Macquarie University

IZA Journal of Labor Economics, 2018, vol. 7, issue 1, 1-22

Abstract: Abstract Estimates of the Okun coefficient are made for Australian workers grouped by age and gender using an unobserved components model. By analogy we define and estimate a participation coefficient which measures the cyclical response of the labour force participation rate to cyclical output shocks. The trend and cycle decomposition methodology used here leads to higher absolute estimates of the Okun coefficient than those typically found in the literature, although we find a pattern of variation in the coefficient by age and gender which is typical. We also find that, in aggregate, participating males in the middle age groups tend to stay in the labour force throughout the business cycle whereas females of the same age tend to participate procyclically. This has policy implications for attempts to increase the rate of participation of particular groups by age and gender following a cyclical downturn.

Keywords: Okun’s Law; Labour force participation; Trend and cycle decomposition (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C32 E32 J21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6) Track citations by RSS feed

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1186/s40172-018-0065-8 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
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:spr:izalbr:v:7:y:2018:i:1:d:10.1186_s40172-018-0065-8

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/40172

DOI: 10.1186/s40172-018-0065-8

Access Statistics for this article

IZA Journal of Labor Economics is currently edited by Joni Hersch and Pierre Cahuc

More articles in IZA Journal of Labor Economics from Springer, Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().

 
Page updated 2023-11-13
Handle: RePEc:spr:izalbr:v:7:y:2018:i:1:d:10.1186_s40172-018-0065-8