 Unemployment Persistence: Does the Size of the Shock Matter ?Marco Bianchi and
Gylfi Zoega
No 1995014, LIDAM Discussion Papers IRES from Université catholique de Louvain, Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (IRES) Abstract: One of the stylized facts of unemployment is that shifts in its mean rate between decades and half-decades account for most of its variance. In this paper, we use a purely statistical analysis based on nonparametric densitity estimation techniques to identify the dates of infrequent changes in the mean of the unemployment rate series of seventeen countries. We find that in most countries, unemployment persistence is small one the (infrequently) changing mean rate has been removed. The changes in the mean rate coincide with the largest single annual changes in actual unemployment. We conclude that the observed persistence in unemployment appears to be consistent with hysteresis models which explain why unemployment hysteresis arises following large shocks to unemployment, but not following small changes. The result poses a challenge to theorist since existing hysteresis models do not have this non-linearity property. Keywords: unemployment hysteresis; infrequent mean shifts; kernel density estimation; multimodality tests (search for similar items in EconPapers) There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it. Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ctl:louvir:1995014 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in LIDAM Discussion Papers IRES from Université catholique de Louvain, Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (IRES) Place Montesquieu 3, 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve (Belgium). Contact information at EDIRC. |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.