IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ces/ceswps/_9392.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Unemployment Persistence in Europe: Evidence from the 27 EU Countries

Author

Listed:
  • Guglielmo Maria Caporale
  • Luis A. Gil-Alana
  • Pablo Vicente Trejo

Abstract

This paper investigates unemployment persistence in the 27 EU member states by applying fractional integration methods to quarterly data (both seasonally adjusted and unadjusted) from 2000q1 to 2020q4. The obtained evidence points to high levels of persistence in all cases. With seasonally adjusted data, a small degree of mean reversion is found in the case of Belgium, Luxembourg and Malta, but this evidence disappears under the assumption of weakly correlated disturbances. More cases of mean reversion are found instead when analysing the unadjusted series. In particular, countries such as Belgium, France, Croatia, Italy, Luxembourg and Malta display orders of integration significantly lower than 1. In addition, significant negative time trends are found in the case of Bulgaria, Croatia, Malta and Romania, and a positive one for Luxembourg. Finally, the Covid-19 pandemic had mixed effects, with (seasonal) persistence increasing in some countries whilst decreasing in others and not changing in a minority of cases. On the whole, our results support the hysteresis hypothesis for the European economies.

Suggested Citation

  • Guglielmo Maria Caporale & Luis A. Gil-Alana & Pablo Vicente Trejo, 2021. "Unemployment Persistence in Europe: Evidence from the 27 EU Countries," CESifo Working Paper Series 9392, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_9392
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp9392.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Guglielmo Maria Caporale & Luis A. Gil‐Alana, 2007. "Nonlinearities and Fractional Integration in the US Unemployment Rate," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 69(4), pages 521-544, August.
    2. Lahiani, A. & Scaillet, O., 2009. "Testing for threshold effect in ARFIMA models: Application to US unemployment rate data," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 25(2), pages 418-428.
    3. Braun, R. Anton & Evans, Charles L., 1995. "Seasonality and equilibrium business cycle theories," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 19(3), pages 503-531, April.
    4. Diebold, Francis X. & Rudebusch, Glenn D., 1991. "On the power of Dickey-Fuller tests against fractional alternatives," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 35(2), pages 155-160, February.
    5. Andini, Corrado & Andini, Monica, 2015. "A Note on Unemployment Persistence and Quantile Parameter Heterogeneity," IZA Discussion Papers 8819, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    6. Guglielmo Maria Caporale & Luis Gil-Alana, 2018. "The asymmetric behaviour of spanish unemployment persistence," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 38(1), pages 98-104.
    7. Ornela Shalari & Ermelinda Laho & Anita Gumeni, 2015. "The asymmetry and fractional integration of the unemployment rate in Albania," International Journal of Economic Policy in Emerging Economies, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 8(3), pages 229-244.
    8. Cuestas, Juan C. & Gil-Alana, Luis A. & Staehr, Karsten, 2011. "A further investigation of unemployment persistence in European transition economies," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 39(4), pages 514-532.
    9. Olivier J. Blanchard & Lawrence H. Summers, 1986. "Hysteresis and the European Unemployment Problem," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1986, Volume 1, pages 15-90, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Chatterjee, Satyajit & Ravikumar, B., 1992. "A neoclassical model of seasonal fluctuations," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 59-86, February.
    11. Adnen Ben Nasr & Ahdi Noomen Ajmi & Rangan Gupta, 2014. "Modelling the volatility of the Dow Jones Islamic Market World Index using a fractionally integrated time-varying GARCH (FITVGARCH) model," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 24(14), pages 993-1004, July.
    12. Barsky, Robert B & Miron, Jeffrey A, 1989. "The Seasonal Cycle and the Business Cycle," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 97(3), pages 503-534, June.
    13. Barro, Robert J, 1988. "The Persistence of Unemployment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 78(2), pages 32-37, May.
    14. Caporale, Guglielmo Maria & Gil-Alana, Luis A., 2008. "Modelling the US, UK and Japanese unemployment rates: Fractional integration and structural breaks," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 52(11), pages 4998-5013, July.
    15. Lee, Dongin & Schmidt, Peter, 1996. "On the power of the KPSS test of stationarity against fractionally-integrated alternatives," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 73(1), pages 285-302, July.
    16. Luis A. Gil‐Alana & S. G. Brian Henry, 2003. "Fractional Integration and the Dynamics of UK Unemployment," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 65(2), pages 221-239, May.
    17. Blanchard, Olivier J. & Summers, Lawrence H., 1987. "Hysteresis in unemployment," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 31(1-2), pages 288-295.
    18. Hassler, Uwe & Wolters, Jurgen, 1994. "On the power of unit root tests against fractional alternatives," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 45(1), pages 1-5, May.
    19. Moses Kpughur Tule & Moses Onyema Oduh & Charles Chike Chiemeke & Obiageri Christiana Ndukwe, 2018. "An Assessment of the Severity of Unemployment in Nigeria: Evidence from Fractional Integration," Journal of African Business, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(1), pages 39-61, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Monge, Manuel, 2021. "U.S. historical initial jobless claims. Is it different with the coronavirus crisis? A fractional integration analysis," International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 167(C), pages 88-95.
    2. Cuestas, Juan C. & Gil-Alana, Luis A. & Staehr, Karsten, 2011. "A further investigation of unemployment persistence in European transition economies," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 39(4), pages 514-532.
    3. Caporale, Guglielmo Maria & Gil-Alana, Luis A., 2008. "Modelling the US, UK and Japanese unemployment rates: Fractional integration and structural breaks," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 52(11), pages 4998-5013, July.
    4. Luis A. Gil-Alana & OlaOluwa S. Yaya, 2021. "Testing fractional unit roots with non-linear smooth break approximations using Fourier functions," Journal of Applied Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 48(13-15), pages 2542-2559, November.
    5. Hassler Uwe & Wolters Jürgen, 2009. "Hysteresis in Unemployment Rates? A Comparison between Germany and the US," Journal of Economics and Statistics (Jahrbuecher fuer Nationaloekonomie und Statistik), De Gruyter, vol. 229(2-3), pages 119-129, April.
    6. Luis A. Gil-Alana & Juncal Cunado & Rangan Gupta, 2017. "Persistence, Mean-Reversion and Non-linearities in Infant Mortality Rates," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 131(1), pages 393-405, March.
    7. Luis Alberiko Gil-Alana & Pedro Garcia-del-Barrio, 2006. "New Revelations about Unemployment Persistence in Spain," Faculty Working Papers 10/06, School of Economics and Business Administration, University of Navarra.
    8. OlaOluwa S. Yaya & Ahamuefula E. Ogbonna & Robert Mudida, 2019. "Hysteresis of unemployment rates in Africa: new findings from Fourier ADF test," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 53(6), pages 2781-2795, November.
    9. Dilem Yıldırım & Dilan Aydın, 2021. "One Crisis After Another: A Dynamic Unemployment Persistence Analysis For The Gips Countries," ERC Working Papers 2102, ERC - Economic Research Center, Middle East Technical University, revised Apr 2021.
    10. Guglielmo Maria Caporale & Juncal Cunado & Luis A. Gil-Alana & Rangan Gupta, 2018. "The relationship between healthcare expenditure and disposable personal income in the US states: a fractional integration and cointegration analysis," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 55(3), pages 913-935, November.
    11. Kurmaş Akdoğan, 2017. "Unemployment hysteresis and structural change in Europe," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 53(4), pages 1415-1440, December.
    12. Guglielmo Caporale & Luis Gil-Alana, 2009. "Multiple shifts and fractional integration in the US and UK unemployment rates," Journal of Economics and Finance, Springer;Academy of Economics and Finance, vol. 33(4), pages 364-375, October.
    13. B. Candelon & A. Dupuy & L. Gil-Alana, 2009. "The nature of occupational unemployment rates in the United States: hysteresis or structural?," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 41(19), pages 2483-2493.
    14. Christian Fischer & Luis Alberiko Gil-Alana, 2005. "The Nature of the Relationship between International Tourism and International Trade: The Case of Ge," Faculty Working Papers 15/05, School of Economics and Business Administration, University of Navarra.
    15. Luis Alberiko Gil-Alana & Zeynel Abidin Ozdemir & Aysit Tansel, 2019. "Long Memory in Turkish Unemployment Rates," Emerging Markets Finance and Trade, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 55(1), pages 201-217, January.
    16. Giorgio Canarella & Luis A. Gil‐Alana & Rangan Gupta & Stephen M. Miller, 2022. "The behaviour of real interest rates: New evidence from a 'suprasecular' perspective," International Finance, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(1), pages 46-64, April.
    17. Luis A. Gil-Alana & Rangan Gupta & Fernando Perez de Gracia, 2016. "Persistence, mean reversion and non-linearities in the US housing prices over 1830--2013," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 48(34), pages 3244-3252, July.
    18. Cuñado, J. & Gil-Alana, L.A. & Perez de Gracia, F., 2012. "Testing for persistent deviations of stock prices to dividends in the Nasdaq index," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 391(20), pages 4675-4685.
    19. Barros, Carlos Pestana & Gil-Alana, Luis A. & Payne, James E., 2011. "An analysis of oil production by OPEC countries: Persistence, breaks, and outliers," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 442-453, January.
    20. Juan Carlos Cuestas & Luis A. Gil-Alana, 2011. "Unemployment hysteresis, structural changes, non-linearities and fractional integration in European transition economies," Working Papers 2011005, The University of Sheffield, Department of Economics, revised Feb 2011.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    unemployment persistence; long memory; Europe; fractional integration;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C22 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Time-Series Models; Dynamic Quantile Regressions; Dynamic Treatment Effect Models; Diffusion Processes
    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
    • O52 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Europe

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:ces:ceswps:_9392. 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: Klaus Wohlrabe (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cesifde.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.