Okun's Law, Development, and Demographics: Differences in the Cyclical Sensitivities of Unemployment Across Economy and Worker Groups

Zidong An, John Bluedorn and Gabriele Ciminelli

No 2021/270, IMF Working Papers from International Monetary Fund

Abstract: The negative and stable relationship between an economy’s aggregate demand conditions and overall unemployment is well-documented. We show that there is a large degree of heterogeneity in the cyclical sensitivities of unemployment across worker and economy groups. First, unemployment is more than twice as sensitive to aggregate demand in advanced as in emerging market and developing economies. Second, youth’s unemployment is twice as sensitive as that of adults’. Third, women’s unemployment is significantly less sensitive to demand than men’s in advanced economies. These findings point to the highly unequal impacts of the business cycle across worker and economy groups.

Keywords: unemployment; business cycles; Okun’s Law; demographics; economy group; unemployment across economy; women's unemployment; cyclical sensitivities of unemployment; unemployment gap; Unemployment; Labor force participation; Employment; Cyclical unemployment; Women (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 22
Date: 2021-11-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mac
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=506819 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Okun’s Law, development, and demographics: differences in the cyclical sensitivities of unemployment across economy and worker groups (2022)
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:2021/270

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 ().