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What goes up sometimes stays up: shocks and institutions as determinants of unemployment persistence

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  • Gianni Amisano
  • Massimiliano Serati

Abstract

We analyse the determinants of unemployment persistence in four OECD countries by estimating a structural Bayesian VAR with an informative prior based on an insiders/outsiders model. We explicitly insert unemployment benefits and labour taxes so that our identification is not affected by the Faust and Leeper (1997) critique. We find widespread hysteresis: demand shocks play a dominant role in explaining unemployment also in the medium‐run. Moreover real wages have low sensitivity to cyclical fluctuations and to labour market disequilibria. Our results emphasise the real power of the unions and their interactions with structural shocks and other institutions as crucial determinants of hysteresis.

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  • Gianni Amisano & Massimiliano Serati, 2003. "What goes up sometimes stays up: shocks and institutions as determinants of unemployment persistence," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 50(4), pages 440-470, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:scotjp:v:50:y:2003:i:4:p:440-470
    DOI: 10.1111/1467-9485.5004005
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    3. Echavarría-Soto, Juan José & López, Enrique & Ocampo, Sergio & Rodríguez-Niño, Norberto, 2012. "Choques, instituciones laborales y desempleo en Colombia," Chapters, in: Arango-Thomas, Luis Eduardo & Hamann-Salcedo, Franz Alonso (ed.), El mercado de trabajo en Colombia : hechos, tendencias e instituciones, chapter 18, pages 753-794, Banco de la Republica de Colombia.
    4. Bella Gabriel Di & Grigoli Francesco & Ramírez Francisco, 2020. "Is unemployment on steroids in advanced economies?," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 20(1), pages 1-17, January.
    5. Holmlund, Bertil & Alexius, Annika, 2008. "Monetary Policy and Swedish Unemployment Fluctuations," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 2, pages 1-25.
    6. Ghafar, Aiman & Masih, Mansur, 2017. "The unemployment rate and its determinants: the Malaysian case," MPRA Paper 110220, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Andrea Vaona, 2015. "Anomalous empirical evidence on money long-run super-neutrality and the vertical long-run Phillips curve," Working Papers 17/2015, University of Verona, Department of Economics.
    8. Alexander Mihailov & Giovanni Razzu & Zhe Wang, 2019. "Heterogeneous effects of single monetary policy on unemployment rates in the largest EMU economies," Economics Discussion Papers em-dp2019-07, Department of Economics, University of Reading.
    9. BATTISTI,Michele, 2006. "Assessing persistence in the Italian rate of unemployment in presence of structural breaks and regional asymmetries, 1977 to 2004," Applied Econometrics and International Development, Euro-American Association of Economic Development, vol. 6(3).
    10. Sunde, Tafirenyika & Akanbi, Olusegun Ayodele, 2016. "The Dynamic Effects of Monetary Policy on Real Variables in Namibia," African Journal of Economic Review, African Journal of Economic Review, vol. 4(1), January.
    11. Massimiliano Serati & Gianni Amisano, 2003. "Unemployment and labour taxation: an econometric analysis," LIUC Papers in Economics 122, Cattaneo University (LIUC).
    12. Tafirenyika Sunde & Olusegun A. Akanbi, 2016. "Sources of unemployment in Namibia: an application of the structural VAR approach," International Journal of Sustainable Economy, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 8(2), pages 125-143.
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    14. Sumera Arshad & Amajd Ali, 2016. "Trade-off between Inflation, Interest and Unemployment Rate of Pakistan: Revisited," Bulletin of Business and Economics (BBE), Research Foundation for Humanity (RFH), vol. 5(4), pages 193-209, December.
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    16. Tafirenyika SUNDE, 2015. "The effects of monetary policy on unemployment in Namibia," Journal of Economic and Social Thought, KSP Journals, vol. 2(4), pages 256-274, December.
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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
    • J64 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Unemployment: Models, Duration, Incidence, and Job Search

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