IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ice/wpaper/wp19_zoega.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Regional Business Cycles And The Natural Rate Of Unemployment

Author

Listed:
  • Gylfi Zoëga

Abstract

Monetary policy is nearly always formulated on the basis of national-level macroeconomic data. This is in spite of the well-known observation that its impact typically differs across regions and industries. The paper shows how policy making might benefit from closer attention to regional developments. Our model is motivated by micro-econometric evidence that shows the response of wage inflation to vacancies to be non-linear: an increase in vacancies raises wage inflation at an increasing rate. Based on this observation, we use a model of the natural rate of unemployment to show that the greater is the dispersion of regional vacancy rates, the higher is the national inflation rate. Our empirical results show that changes in the distribution of regional unemployment in the United States in the 1990s is attributed, in part, to a falling natural rate.

Suggested Citation

  • Gylfi Zoëga, 2002. "Regional Business Cycles And The Natural Rate Of Unemployment," Economics wp19_zoega, Department of Economics, Central bank of Iceland.
    • Handle: RePEc:ice:wpaper:wp19_zoega
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sedlabanki.is/uploads/files/WP-19.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Layard, R. & Nickell, S., 1991. "Unemployment in the OECD Countries," Economics Series Working Papers 99130, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    2. Christina D. Romer & David H. Romer, 1997. "Reducing Inflation: Motivation and Strategy," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number rome97-1, September.
    3. Abraham, Katharine G & Katz, Lawrence F, 1986. "Cyclical Unemployment: Sectoral Shifts or Aggregate Disturbances?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 94(3), pages 507-522, June.
    4. Francesconi, Marco, et al, 2000. "Education and the Natural Rate of Unemployment," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 52(1), pages 204-223, January.
    5. Henry G. Overman & Diego Puga, 2002. "Unemployment clusters across Europe's regions and countries," Economic Policy, CEPR;CES;MSH, vol. 17(34), pages 115-148, April.
    6. Laurence Ball & N. Gregory Mankiw, 2002. "The NAIRU in Theory and Practice," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 16(4), pages 115-136, Fall.
    7. S. Lael Brainard & David M. Cutler, 1993. "Sectoral Shifts and Cyclical Unemployment Reconsidered," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 108(1), pages 219-243.
    8. Gerald Carlino & Keith Sill, 2001. "Regional Income Fluctuations: Common Trends And Common Cycles," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 83(3), pages 446-456, August.
    9. Albert Ma, Ching-to & Weiss, Andrew M., 1993. "A signaling theory of unemployment," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 135-157, January.
    10. Fratantoni, Michael & Schuh, Scott, 2003. " Monetary Policy, Housing, and Heterogeneous Regional Markets," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 35(4), pages 557-589, August.
    11. David Card & Dean Hyslop, 1997. "Does Inflation "Grease the Wheels of the Labor Market"?," NBER Chapters,in: Reducing Inflation: Motivation and Strategy, pages 71-122 National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Phelps, Edmund S & Zoega, Gylfi, 1997. "The Rise and Downward Trend of the Natural Rate," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 87(2), pages 283-289, May.
    13. Michael T. Owyang & Jeremy Piger & Howard J. Wall, 2005. "Business Cycle Phases in U.S. States," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 87(4), pages 604-616, November.
    14. 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.
    15. Michael T. Owyang & Howard J. Wall, 2004. "Structural breaks and regional disparities in the transmission of monetary policy," Working Papers 2003-008, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
    16. Christopher A. Pissarides, 2000. "Equilibrium Unemployment Theory, 2nd Edition," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262161877.
    17. Lilien, David M, 1982. "Sectoral Shifts and Cyclical Unemployment," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 90(4), pages 777-793, August.
    18. Kenneth J. McLaughlin, 1999. "Are nominal wage changes skewed away from wage cuts?," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, issue May, pages 117-132.
    19. Edmund S. Phelps, 1968. "Money-Wage Dynamics and Labor-Market Equilibrium," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 76, pages 678-678.
    20. Gerald Carlino & Robert Defina, 1998. "The Differential Regional Effects Of Monetary Policy," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 80(4), pages 572-587, November.
    21. Hoon, Hian Teck & Phelps, Edmund S., 1997. "Growth, wealth and the natural rate: Is Europe's jobs crisis a growth crisis?," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 41(3-5), pages 549-557, April.
    22. Michael Woodford, 1994. "Structural Slumps," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 32(4), pages 1784-1815, December.
    23. Walter Y. Oi, 1962. "Labor as a Quasi-Fixed Factor," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 70, pages 538-538.
    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. Luca Bindelli, 2005. "Systematic monetary policy and persistence," Cahiers de Recherches Economiques du Département d'économie 05.07, Université de Lausanne, Faculté des HEC, Département d’économie.
    2. Kumar, Anil & M. Orrenius, Pia, 2016. "A closer look at the Phillips curve using state-level data," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 47(PA), pages 84-102.
    3. Roberto Bande & Marika Karanassou, 2011. "The NRU and the Evolution of Regional Disparities in Spanish Unemployment," Working Papers 681, Queen Mary University of London, School of Economics and Finance.
    4. Strauss, Jack, 2013. "Does housing drive state-level job growth? Building permits and consumer expectations forecast a state’s economic activity," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(1), pages 77-93.
    5. Harendra Behera & Garima Wahi & Muneesh Kapur, 2017. "Phillips Curve Relationship in India: Evidence from State-Level Analysis," Working Papers id:11973, eSocialSciences.
    6. Owyang, Michael T. & Rapach, David E. & Wall, Howard J., 2009. "States and the business cycle," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(2), pages 181-194, March.
    7. Hiroshi Fujiki & Howard J. Wall, 2006. "Controlling for geographic dispersion when estimating the Japanese Phillips curve," Working Papers 2006-057, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
    8. Vassilis Monastiriotis, 2008. "The Emergence of Regional Policy in Bulgaria: regional problems, EU influences and domestic constraints," GreeSE – Hellenic Observatory Papers on Greece and Southeast Europe 15, Hellenic Observatory, LSE.

    More about this item

    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:ice:wpaper:wp19_zoega. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Central Bank of Iceland). General contact details of provider: http://edirc.repec.org/data/sedgvis.html .

    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 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.

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.