IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/euf/ecobri/022.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

On Econometrics with a Human Face and Business Cycles: A Reply to Fioramanti and Waldmann's Criticism on the EU’s NAWRU Methodology

Author

Listed:
  • Atanas Hristov
  • Werner Roeger

Abstract

A recent VOX article by M. Fioramanti and R. Waldmann criticises the way the European Commission estimates the unemployment gap for EU countries and especially the gap for Italy. This economic brief refutes the criticism and, in turn, argues that the implicitly suggested approach from Fioramanti and Waldmann for estimating the unemployment gap leads to results which, firstly, are problematic on purely economic grounds and, secondly, have dubious statistical properties.

Suggested Citation

  • Atanas Hristov & Werner Roeger, 2017. "On Econometrics with a Human Face and Business Cycles: A Reply to Fioramanti and Waldmann's Criticism on the EU’s NAWRU Methodology," European Economy - Economic Briefs 022, Directorate General Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN), European Commission.
    • Handle: RePEc:euf:ecobri:022
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://economy-finance.ec.europa.eu/publications/econometrics-human-face-and-business-cycles-reply-fioramanti-and-waldmanns-criticism-eus-nawru_en
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Robert J. Gordon, 1997. "The Time-Varying NAIRU and Its Implications for Economic Policy," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 11(1), pages 11-32, Winter.
    2. Thomas Laubach, 2001. "Measuring The NAIRU: Evidence From Seven Economies," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 83(2), pages 218-231, May.
    3. Douglas O. Staiger & James H. Stock & Mark W. Watson, 1997. "How Precise Are Estimates of the Natural Rate of Unemployment?," NBER Chapters, in: Reducing Inflation: Motivation and Strategy, pages 195-246, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Kuttner, Kenneth N, 1994. "Estimating Potential Output as a Latent Variable," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 12(3), pages 361-368, July.
    5. A. W. Phillips, 1958. "The Relation Between Unemployment and the Rate of Change of Money Wage Rates in the United Kingdom, 1861–1957," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 25(100), pages 283-299, November.
    6. Karel Havik & Kieran Mc Morrow & Fabrice Orlandi & Christophe Planas & Rafal Raciborski & Werner Roeger & Alessandro Rossi & Anna Thum-Thysen & Valerie Vandermeulen, 2014. "The Production Function Methodology for Calculating Potential Growth Rates & Output Gaps," European Economy - Economic Papers 2008 - 2015 535, Directorate General Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN), European Commission.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ademmer, Martin & Boysen-Hogrefe, Jens & Carstensen, Kai & Hauber, Philipp & Jannsen, Nils & Kooths, Stefan & Rossian, Thies & Stolzenburg, Ulrich, 2019. "Schätzung von Produktionspotenzial und -lücke: Eine Analyse des EU-Verfahrens und mögliche Verbesserungen," Open Access Publications from Kiel Institute for the World Economy 193965, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW).
    2. Ademmer, Martin & Boysen-Hogrefe, Jens & Carstensen, Kai & Hauber, Philipp & Jannsen, Nils & Kooths, Stefan & Rossian, Thies & Stolzenburg, Ulrich, 2019. "Schätzung von Produktionspotenzial und -lücke: Eine Analyse des EU-Verfahrens und mögliche Verbesserungen," Kieler Beiträge zur Wirtschaftspolitik 19, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    3. Fioramanti, Marco & Waldmann, Robert J., 2017. "The Econometrics of the EU Fiscal Governance: is the European Commission methodology still adequate?," MPRA Paper 81858, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Breuer Sebastian & Elstner Steffen, 2020. "Germany’s Growth Prospects against the Backdrop of Demographic Change," Journal of Economics and Statistics (Jahrbuecher fuer Nationaloekonomie und Statistik), De Gruyter, vol. 240(5), pages 565-605, October.
    5. Bofinger, Peter & Schnabel, Isabel & Feld, Lars P. & Schmidt, Christoph M. & Wieland, Volker, 2017. "Für eine zukunftsorientierte Wirtschaftspolitik. Jahresgutachten 2017/18 [Towards a Forward-Looking Economic Policy. Annual Report 2017/18]," Annual Economic Reports / Jahresgutachten, German Council of Economic Experts / Sachverständigenrat zur Begutachtung der gesamtwirtschaftlichen Entwicklung, volume 127, number 201718.
    6. Breuer, Sebastian & Elstner, Steffen, 2017. "Die Wachstumsperspektiven der deutschen Wirtschaft vor dem Hintergrund des demografischen Wandels: Die Mittelfristprojektion des Sachverständigenrates," Working Papers 07/2017, German Council of Economic Experts / Sachverständigenrat zur Begutachtung der gesamtwirtschaftlichen Entwicklung.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Arabinda Basistha & Richard Startz, 2004. "Measuring the NAIRU with Reduced Uncertainty: A Multiple Indicator-Common Component Approach," Working Papers UWEC-2004-22, University of Washington, Department of Economics.
    2. De la Serve, M-E. & Lemoine, M., 2011. "Measuring the NAIRU: a complementary approach," Working papers 342, Banque de France.
    3. Rodríguez, Gabriel, 2010. "Using A Forward-Looking Phillips Curve to Estimate the Output Gap in Peru," Review of Applied Economics, Lincoln University, Department of Financial and Business Systems, vol. 6(1-2), pages 1-13, April.
    4. Richardson Kojo Edeme, 2018. "Providing an Empirical Insight into Nigeria’s Non-acceleration Rate of Unemployment," Journal of Development Policy and Practice, , vol. 3(2), pages 179-190, July.
    5. Victor Bystrov, 2020. "Identification and Estimation of Initial Conditions in Non-Minimal State-Space Models," Central European Journal of Economic Modelling and Econometrics, Central European Journal of Economic Modelling and Econometrics, vol. 12(4), pages 413-429, December.
    6. Constantinescu, Mihnea & Nguyen, Anh D.M., 2018. "Unemployment or credit: Which one holds the potential? Results for a small open economy with a low degree of financialization," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 42(4), pages 649-664.
    7. Rebecca L Driver & Jennifer V Greenslade & Richard G Pierse, 2003. "The role of expectations in estimates of the NAIRU in the United States and the United Kingdom," Bank of England working papers 180, Bank of England.
    8. Basistha, Arabinda & Nelson, Charles R., 2007. "New measures of the output gap based on the forward-looking new Keynesian Phillips curve," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(2), pages 498-511, March.
    9. Kajuth, Florian, 2012. "Identifying the Phillips curve through shifts in volatility," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 34(4), pages 975-991.
    10. Jennifer V Greenslade & Richard G Pierse & Jumana Saleheen, 2003. "A Kalman filter approach to estimating the UK NAIRU," Bank of England working papers 179, Bank of England.
    11. Stock, James H. & Watson, Mark W., 1999. "Forecasting inflation," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(2), pages 293-335, October.
    12. Eric Heyer & Frédéric Reynès & Henri Sterdyniak, 2004. "Observable and unobservable variables in the theory of the equilibrium rate of unemployment, a comparison between France and the United States," Working Papers hal-01027420, HAL.
    13. Beissinger, Thomas, 2003. "Strukturelle Arbeitslosigkeit in Europa : eine Bestandsaufnahme (Structural unemployment in Europe * an inventory)," Mitteilungen aus der Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung, Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany], vol. 36(4), pages 411-427.
    14. repec:hal:wpspec:info:hdl:2441/2005 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Bozani, Vasiliki & Drydakis, Nick, 2011. "Studying the NAIRU and its Implications," IZA Discussion Papers 6079, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    16. repec:hal:wpspec:info:hdl:2441/1904 is not listed on IDEAS
    17. Mellár, Tamás & Németh, Kristóf, 2018. "A kibocsátási rés becslése többváltozós állapottérmodellekben. Szuperhiszterézis és további empirikus eredmények [Estimating output gap in multivariate state space models. Super-hysteresis and furt," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(6), pages 557-591.
    18. Alex Durand, 2005. "Le chômage structurel dans une petite économie ouverte. Application au Luxembourg," Économie et Prévision, Programme National Persée, vol. 169(3), pages 105-126.
    19. Irac, D., 2000. "Estimation of a Time Varying NAIRU for France," Working papers 75, Banque de France.
    20. Fabia Gumbau-Brisa & Giovanni P. Olivei, 2013. "An evaluation of the Federal Reserve estimates of the natural rate of unemployment in real time," Working Papers 13-24, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
    21. Vasiliki Bozani, 2011. "NAIRU, Unemployment and Post Keynesian Economics," Working Papers 1104, University of Crete, Department of Economics.
    22. Ladislav Wintr & Paolo Guarda & Abdelaziz Rouabah, 2005. "Estimating the natural interest rate for the euro area and Luxembourg," BCL working papers 15, Central Bank of Luxembourg.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Potential output; Natural rate of unemployment; Output gap; Unemployment gap; Phillips curve; On Econometrics with a Human Face and Business Cycles; A Reply to Fioramanti and Waldmann's Criticism on the EU’s NAWRU Methodology; Hristov; Roeger.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E31 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Price Level; Inflation; Deflation
    • E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles
    • O4 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:euf:ecobri:022. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ECFIN INFO (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dg2ecbe.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.