IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/rdg/emxxdp/em-dp2013-07.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Are Business Cycles Gender Neutral?

Author

Listed:
  • Giovanni Razzu

    (Department of Economics, University of Reading)

  • Carl Singleton

Abstract

We study the relationship between business cycles and gender employment rate gaps in the UK over the last four decades, on which there is surprisingly limited evidence. An analysis of employment rates as opposed to unemployment accounts for the greater tendency of women to move in and out of economic activity between spells of work. We estimate the relationship using a multivariate GARCH model and show results by using both the Christiano Fitzgerald Bass Pand filter and the Hodrick Prescott filter to extract the cyclical components of GDP. We find that business cycles are not gender neutral, their impact being greater on male than on female employment rates. A one percentage point increase in the deviation from trend GDP determines an increase in the gender employment rate gap of 0.2-0.25 percentage points.

Suggested Citation

  • Giovanni Razzu & Carl Singleton, 2013. "Are Business Cycles Gender Neutral?," Economics Discussion Papers em-dp2013-07, Department of Economics, University of Reading.
    • Handle: RePEc:rdg:emxxdp:em-dp2013-07
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.reading.ac.uk/web/FILES/economics/emdp2013104.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Perron, Pierre & Wada, Tatsuma, 2009. "Let's take a break: Trends and cycles in US real GDP," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(6), pages 749-765, September.
    2. Marianna Belloc & Riccardo Tilli, 2013. "Unemployment by gender and gender catching-up: Empirical evidence from the Italian regions," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 92(3), pages 481-494, August.
    3. Ghazala Azmat & Maia Güell & Alan Manning, 2006. "Gender Gaps in Unemployment Rates in OECD Countries," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 24(1), pages 1-38, January.
    4. Herve Queneau & Amit Sen, 2009. "Further Evidence on the Dynamics of Unemployment by Gender," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 29(4), pages 3162-3176.
    5. Marianne Baxter & Robert G. King, 1999. "Measuring Business Cycles: Approximate Band-Pass Filters For Economic Time Series," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 81(4), pages 575-593, November.
    6. Lawrence J. Christiano & Terry J. Fitzgerald, 2003. "The Band Pass Filter," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 44(2), pages 435-465, May.
    7. Herv� Queneau & Amit Sen, 2010. "On the persistence of the gender unemployment gap: evidence from eight OECD countries," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 17(2), pages 141-145, January.
    8. Kim B. Clark & Lawrence H. Summers, 1981. "Demographic Differences in Cyclical Employment Variation," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 16(1), pages 61-79.
    9. Kim, Kiwhan & Schmidt, Peter, 1993. "Unit root tests with conditional heteroskedasticity," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 59(3), pages 287-300, October.
    10. Kwiatkowski, Denis & Phillips, Peter C. B. & Schmidt, Peter & Shin, Yongcheol, 1992. "Testing the null hypothesis of stationarity against the alternative of a unit root : How sure are we that economic time series have a unit root?," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 54(1-3), pages 159-178.
    11. Hodrick, Robert J & Prescott, Edward C, 1997. "Postwar U.S. Business Cycles: An Empirical Investigation," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 29(1), pages 1-16, February.
    12. Johnson, Janet L, 1983. "Sex Differentials in Unemployment Rates: A Case for No Concern," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 91(2), pages 293-303, April.
    13. Peiró, Amado & Belaire-Franch, Jorge & Gonzalo, Maria Teresa, 2012. "Unemployment, cycle and gender," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 34(4), pages 1167-1175.
    14. Kilian, Lutz & Ivanov, Ventzislav, 2001. "A Practitioner's Guide to Lag-Order Selection for Vector Autoregressions," CEPR Discussion Papers 2685, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    15. Elliott, Graham & Rothenberg, Thomas J & Stock, James H, 1996. "Efficient Tests for an Autoregressive Unit Root," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 64(4), pages 813-836, July.
    16. Arthur F. Burns & Wesley C. Mitchell, 1946. "Measuring Business Cycles," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number burn46-1, March.
    17. Bollerslev, Tim, 1990. "Modelling the Coherence in Short-run Nominal Exchange Rates: A Multivariate Generalized ARCH Model," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 72(3), pages 498-505, August.
    18. David N. F. Bell & David G. Blanchflower, 2011. "Young people and the Great Recession," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 27(2), pages 241-267.
    19. Marianna Belloc & Riccardo Tilli, 2010. "Gender Unemployment Catching-up: Empirical Evidence from Italian Regions," CESifo Working Paper Series 3300, CESifo.
    20. Herve Queneau & Amit Sen, 2008. "Evidence on the dynamics of unemployment by gender," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 40(16), pages 2099-2108.
    21. Steven Cook, 2006. "The robustness of modified unit root tests in the presence of GARCH," Quantitative Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 6(4), pages 359-363.
    22. Blank, Rebecca M, 1989. "Disaggregating the Effect of the Business Cycle on the Distribution of Income," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 56(222), pages 141-163, May.
    23. Lilien, David M. & Hall, Robert E., 1987. "Cyclical fluctuations in the labor market," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & R. Layard (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 17, pages 1001-1035, Elsevier.
    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. Timo Baas & Farzaneh Shamsfakhr, 2017. "Times of crisis and female labor force participation - Lessons from the Spanish flu," EcoMod2017 10313, EcoMod.
    2. Ousama Ben-Salha & Zouhair Mrabet, 2019. "Is Economic Growth Really Jobless? Empirical Evidence from North Africa," Comparative Economic Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Association for Comparative Economic Studies, vol. 61(4), pages 598-624, December.
    3. Louail Bilal & Ben Haj Hamida Hayet, 2021. "Asymmetry Relationship between Economic Growth and Unemployment Rates in the Arab countries: Application of the OKUN Law during 1960-2017," Management, Sciendo, vol. 25(2), pages 1-21, December.
    4. Luigi Bonaventura & Roberto Cellini & Mario Sambataro, 2020. "Gender differences in the Okun's law across the Italian regions," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 40(4), pages 2780-2789.

    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. Bod’a, Martin & Považanová, Mariana, 2021. "Output-unemployment asymmetry in Okun coefficients for OECD countries," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 307-323.
    2. Peiró, Amado & Belaire-Franch, Jorge & Gonzalo, Maria Teresa, 2012. "Unemployment, cycle and gender," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 34(4), pages 1167-1175.
    3. Giovanni Razzu & Carl Singleton, 2018. "Segregation and Gender Gaps in the United Kingdom's Great Recession and Recovery," Feminist Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 24(4), pages 31-55, October.
    4. Ángel Guillén & Gabriel Rodríguez, 2014. "Trend-cycle decomposition for Peruvian GDP: application of an alternative method," Latin American Economic Review, Springer;Centro de Investigaciòn y Docencia Económica (CIDE), vol. 23(1), pages 1-44, December.
    5. Wagner, Stephan M. & Mizgier, Kamil J. & Papageorgiou, Stylianos, 2017. "Operational disruptions and business cycles," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 183(PA), pages 66-78.
    6. de Carvalho, Miguel & Rua, António, 2017. "Real-time nowcasting the US output gap: Singular spectrum analysis at work," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 185-198.
    7. Kufenko, Vadim, 2016. "Spurious periodicities in cliometric series: Simultaneous testing," Violette Reihe: Schriftenreihe des Promotionsschwerpunkts "Globalisierung und Beschäftigung" 48/2016, University of Hohenheim, Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg, Evangelisches Studienwerk.
    8. Calcagnini, Giorgio & Travaglini, Giuseppe, 2014. "A time series analysis of labor productivity. Italy versus the European countries and the U.S," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 622-628.
    9. Emmanuel Apergis & Nicholas Apergis, 2019. "“Sakura” has not grown in a day: infrastructure investment and economic growth in Japan under different tax regimes," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 57(2), pages 541-567, August.
    10. Polbin, Andrey & Skrobotov, Anton, 2017. "Спектральная Оценка Компоненты Бизнес Цикла Ввп России С Учетом Высокой Зависимости От Условий Торговли [Spectral estimation of the business cycle component of the Russian GDP under high dependence," MPRA Paper 78667, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    11. Luca Benati, 2001. "Band-pass filtering, cointegration, and business cycle analysis," Bank of England working papers 142, Bank of England.
    12. Henk C. Kranendonk & Jan Bonenkamp & Johan P. Verbruggen, 2004. "A Leading Indicator for the Dutch Economy – Methodological and Empirical Revision of the CPB System," CESifo Working Paper Series 1200, CESifo.
    13. Pontines, Victor, 2017. "The financial cycles in four East Asian economies," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 65(C), pages 51-66.
    14. Tatsuma Wada & Pierre Perron, 2006. "State Space Model with Mixtures of Normals: Specifications and Applications to International Data," Boston University - Department of Economics - Working Papers Series WP2006-029, Boston University - Department of Economics.
    15. Sean J. Gossel & Nicholas Biekpe, 2013. "The Cyclical Relationships Between South Africa's Net Capital Inflows and Fiscal and Monetary Policies," Emerging Markets Finance and Trade, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 49(2), pages 64-83, March.
    16. Baffigi, Alberto & Bontempi, Maria Elena & Felice, Emanuele & Golinelli, Roberto, 2015. "The changing relationship between inflation and the economic cycle in Italy: 1861–2012," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 53-70.
    17. Viv B. Hall & Peter Thomson, 2021. "Does Hamilton’s OLS Regression Provide a “better alternative” to the Hodrick-Prescott Filter? A New Zealand Business Cycle Perspective," Journal of Business Cycle Research, Springer;Centre for International Research on Economic Tendency Surveys (CIRET), vol. 17(2), pages 151-183, November.
    18. Rua, Antonio & Nunes, Luis C., 2005. "Coincident and leading indicators for the euro area: A frequency band approach," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 21(3), pages 503-523.
    19. Crespo-Cuaresma, Jesús & Fernández-Amador, Octavio, 2013. "Business cycle convergence in EMU: A first look at the second moment," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 265-284.
    20. Baffes, John & Kabundi, Alain, 2023. "Commodity price shocks: Order within chaos?," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 83(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    business cycles; gender; employment; multivariate GARCH models;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
    • C32 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Multiple or Simultaneous Equation Models; Multiple Variables - - - Time-Series Models; Dynamic Quantile Regressions; Dynamic Treatment Effect Models; Diffusion Processes; State Space Models

    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:rdg:emxxdp:em-dp2013-07. 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: Alexander Mihailov (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/derdguk.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.