Labor Market Slack and the Output Gap: The Case of Korea

Niels-Jakob Hansen, Joannes Mongardini and Fan Zhang

No 2019/167, IMF Working Papers from International Monetary Fund

Abstract: Output gap estimates are widely used to inform macroeconomic policy decisions, including in Korea. The main determinant of these estimates is the measure of labor market slack. The traditional measure of unemployment in Korea yields an incomplete estimate of labor market slack, given that many workers prefer involuntary part-time jobs or leaving the labor force rather than registering as unemployed. This paper discusses a way in which the measure of unemployment can be broadened to yield a more accurate measure of labor market slack. This broader measure is then used to estimate the output gap using a multivariate filter, yielding a more meaningful measure of the output gap.

Keywords: WP; labor market slack; output gap estimate; labor force; discouraged worker; Potential output; labor markets; labor market resource; labor market condition; persistent output gap; output gap from the MVF; Output gap; Unemployment; Capacity utilization; Global (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 23
Date: 2019-08-02
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=48519 (application/pdf)

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:imf:imfwpa:2019/167

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/pubs/ord_info.htm

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IMF Working Papers from International Monetary Fund International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC USA. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Akshay Modi ().