Are Unemployment Rates in the Post-Communist Economies Stationary? Empirical Evidence from Central Asia

Hysteresis of unemployment is a crucial element to understand the nature and characteristic of the labour market in the post-communist economy. However, previous empirical inquiries mainly focused on unemployment hysteresis in the post-communist economies in Europe and there is little systematic analysis on the former communist countries in Asia. To fill this research gap, this paper chooses five Central Asian republics of the former Soviet Union, namely Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, and examines the unemployment hysteresis in these post-communist economies. For the purpose of empirical analysis, this paper uses several different unit root tests, such as the SURADF test, the Fourier ADF test and the panel Fourier IPS test. The univariate unit root tests indicate that unemployment rate in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan can be characterised as the stationary process. The panel unit root tests indicates that unemployment rate in the Central Asia can be stationary process. Overall, the current study concludes that unemployment rates in the post-communist economies in Central Asia can be best described as stationary process in line with the natural rate hypothesis.