Studies show that the existence of strict rules in the goods and labor markets is one of the main factors creating high unemployment rates and low levels of employment. In this study, a permanent ...reduction in policy parameters, reduction of barriers to entry in the commodity market, reduction of dismissal costs, reduction of unemployment insurance benefits have been investigated. The findings of this study show that deregulation in Iran's commodity and labor markets reduces economic growth and increases unemployment in the short run, but has a booming effect in the long run, increasing economic growth and reducing unemployment. But simultaneous deregulation in the two markets reduces the level of inefficient fluctuations in the margins of prices paid by the consumer and received by the producer, which disrupts the equilibrium decisions of economic units, and has synergistic effects on increasing growth and reducing unemployment. Therefore, it is recommended that policymakers use the interdependence of policies to increase the effects of prosperity and determine reform policies in the form of package.
What are the effects of uncertainty shocks on unemployment dynamics? We answer this question by estimating non-linear (Smooth-Transition) VARs with post-WWII U.S. data. The relevance of uncertainty ...shocks is found to be much larger than that predicted by standard linear VARs in terms of (i) magnitude of the reaction of the unemployment rate to such shocks, and (ii) contribution to the variance of the prediction errors of unemployment at business cycle frequencies. The ability of different classes of DSGE models to replicate our results is discussed.
•We study the impact of uncertainty shocks on U.S. unemployment.•We identify uncertainty shocks in recessions by estimating a Smooth Transition VAR.•The impact of uncertainty shocks may be severely underestimated by linear models.•Uncertainty shocks are substantially more costly under recessions.•The contribution of uncertainty shocks is larger than that of monetary policy shocks.
This study investigates the sensitivity of the responses of the real price of oil and the U.S. unemployment rate to several real economic activity (REA) measures proposed in the literature. It then ...estimates the responses of the above macroeconomic variables to a set of alternative exogenous oil supply shock series driven by different modelling strategies. While the results are qualitatively robust across the REA measures, they are sensitive to the exogenous oil supply shock series selected.
This study evaluates the effect of renewable, non-renewable energy consumption and economic growth on unemployment rate across 51 US states over the period 1977–2017. We applied a fixed effect model ...and a Seemingly Unrelated Regression Equations (SURE) model, which allows for an unknown form of cross-sectional dependence and slope heterogeneity. While the results of the fixed effects model indicate the negative and positive effects of non-renewable and renewable energy consumption on the unemployment rate, respectively, mixed results were received by employing SURE model at the state level. By allowing for slope heterogeneity, the results of the SURE model confirm that the non-renewable and renewable energy consumption only have job-creating effects in 19 and 6 out of 51 states, respectively. The renewable energy consumption has pro-unemployment effect in 20 states.
•In 51 US states, renewable and nonrenewable energy's effect on unemployment was tested.•A seemingly unrelated regression equations model was employed.•Non-renewable energy has a job-creating effect in 19 states.•Renewable energy consumption has a positive effect on employment in 6 states.
We assess the performance of an index of Google job-search intensity as a leading indicator for predicting the monthly US unemployment rate. We carry out a deep out-of-sample forecasting comparison ...of models that adopt the Google Index, the more standard initial claims, or alternative indicators based on economic policy uncertainty and consumers’ and employers’ surveys. The Google-based models outperform most of the others, with their relative performances improving with the forecast horizon. Only models that use employers’ expectations on a longer sample do better at short horizons. Furthermore, quarterly predictions constructed using Google-based models provide forecasts that are more accurate than those from the Survey of Professional Forecasters, models based on labor force flows, or standard nonlinear models. Google-based models seem to predict particularly well at the turning point that takes place at the beginning of the Great Recession, while their relative predictive abilities stabilize afterwards.
We examine how deaths and emergency department (ED) visits related to use of opioid analgesics (opioids) and other drugs vary with macroeconomic conditions. As the county unemployment rate increases ...by one percentage point, the opioid death rate per 100,000 rises by 0.19 (3.6%) and the opioid overdose ED visit rate per 100,000 increases by 0.95 (7.0%). Macroeconomic shocks also increase the overall drug death rate, but this increase is driven by rising opioid deaths. Our findings hold when performing a state-level analysis, rather than county-level; are primarily driven by adverse events among whites; and are stable across time periods.
Okun’s Law BALL, LAURENCE; LEIGH, DANIEL; LOUNGANI, PRAKASH
Journal of money, credit and banking,
October 2017, Letnik:
49, Številka:
7
Journal Article
Recenzirano
This paper asks how well Okun’s Law fits short-run unemployment movements in the United States since 1948 and in 20 advanced economies since 1980.We find that Okun’s Lawis a strong relationship in ...most countries, and one that is fairly stable over time. Accounts of breakdowns in the Law, such as the emergence of “jobless recoveries,” are flawed or exaggerated. We also find that the coefficient in the relationship—the effect of a 1% change in output on the unemployment rate—varies substantially across countries. This variation is partly explained by idiosyncratic features of national labor markets, but it is not related to differences in employment protection legislation.
Disability Insurance and the Great Recession Maestas, Nicole; Mullen, Kathleen J.; Strand, Alexander
The American economic review,
05/2015, Letnik:
105, Številka:
5
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
The US Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) program is designed to provide income support to workers who become unable to work because of a severe, long-lasting disability. In this study, we ...use administrative data to estimate the effect of labor market conditions, as measured by the unemployment rate, on the number of SSDI applications, the number and composition of initial allowances and denials, and the timing of applications relative to disability onset. We analyze the period of the Great Recession, and compare this period with business cycle effects over the past two decades, from 1992 through 2012.
Using recent results in the measurement error literature, we show that the official US unemployment rate substantially underestimates the true level of unemployment, due to misclassification errors ...in the labor force status in the Current Population Survey. During the period from January 1996 to August 2011, the corrected monthly unemployment rates are between 1 and 4.4 percentage points (2.1 percentage points on average) higher than the official rates, and are more sensitive to changes in business cycles. The labor force participation rates, however, are not affected by this correction. PUBLICATION ABSTRACT
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