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Gender and the Business Cycle: A Stocks and Flows Analysis of US and UK Labour Market States

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  • Giovanni Razzu

    (Department of Economics, University of Reading)

  • Carl Singleton

Abstract

In this paper we combine an analysis of all labour market stocks and flows to assess gender gaps during periods of economic recessions and booms in oth the US and the UK. Starting from an improved understanding of the relationship between gender and the business cycle, we analyse three important and related gender issues: how the fluidity of the labour market explains the way gender gaps in population rates behave during economic cycles, whether the well-known stock-flow fallacy in the importance of cyclical differences in participation extends to gender patterns, and the potential presence of the added worker effect at the aggregate level during the latest Great Recession. We find that, for the UK in particular, flows reveal more prevalent gender differences in participation over the cycle than an analysis of stocks would imply. This is consistent with a female specific added worker effect in the UK, which is not present in the US.

Suggested Citation

  • Giovanni Razzu & Carl Singleton, 2014. "Gender and the Business Cycle: A Stocks and Flows Analysis of US and UK Labour Market States," Economics Discussion Papers em-dp2014-10, Department of Economics, University of Reading.
    • Handle: RePEc:rdg:emxxdp:em-dp2014-10
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    Cited by:

    1. Fontaine, Idriss & Gálvez-Iniesta, Ismael & Gomes, Pedro & Vila-Martin, Diego, 2020. "Labour market flows: Accounting for the public sector," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).
    2. Izaskun Barba & Belen Iraizoz, 2020. "Effect of the Great Crisis on Sectoral Female Employment in Europe: A Structural Decomposition Analysis," Economies, MDPI, vol. 8(3), pages 1-24, August.
    3. Sarah Louise Jewell & Giovanni Razzu & Carl Singleton, 2020. "Who Works for Whom and the UK Gender Pay Gap," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 58(1), pages 50-81, March.
    4. Karen García-Rojas & Paula Herrera-Idárraga & Leonardo Fabio Morales & Natalia Ramírez-Bustamante & Ana María Tribín-Uribe, 2020. "(She)cession: The Colombian female staircase fall," Borradores de Economia 1140, Banco de la Republica de Colombia.
    5. Mariola Piłatowska & Dorota Witkowska, 2022. "Gender Segregation at Work over Business Cycle—Evidence from Selected EU Countries," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(16), pages 1-19, August.
    6. Carl Singleton, 2018. "Long‐Term Unemployment and the Great Recession: Evidence from UK Stocks and Flows," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 65(2), pages 105-126, May.
    7. 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.
    8. Magdalena Osińska & Tadeusz Kufel & Marcin Błażejowski & Paweł Kufel, 2020. "Modeling mechanism of economic growth using threshold autoregression models," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 58(3), pages 1381-1430, March.
    9. Daniel Schaefer & Carl Singleton, 2017. "Real Wages and Hours in the Great Recession: Evidence from Firms and their Entry-Level Jobs," CESifo Working Paper Series 6766, CESifo.
    10. 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.
    11. Giovanni Razzu & Carl Singleton & Mark Mitchell, 2020. "On why the gender employment gap in Britain has stalled since the early 1990s," Industrial Relations Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 51(6), pages 476-501, November.
    12. Kovalenko, Tim & Töpfer, Marina, 2021. "Cyclical dynamics and the gender pay gap: A structural VAR approach," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 99(C).
    13. Howard J. Wall, 2023. "Sex and the business cycle," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 55(17), pages 1958-1971, April.
    14. Neyer, Ulrike & Stempel, Daniel, 2021. "Gender discrimination, inflation, and the business cycle," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).
    15. Alexander Mihailov & Giovanni Razzu & Zhe Wang, 2020. "The Gender Unemployment Gap Across the Euro Area: The Role of Macroeconomic Shocks and Labour Market Institutions," Economics Discussion Papers em-dp2020-26, Department of Economics, University of Reading.
    16. Sergei SOARES & Janine BERG, 2022. "The labour market fallout of COVID‐19: Who endures, who doesn't and what are the implications for inequality," International Labour Review, International Labour Organization, vol. 161(1), pages 5-28, March.
    17. Ana Tribin & Karen García-Rojas & Paula Herrera-Idarraga & Leonardo Fabio Morales & Natalia Ramirez-Bustamante, 2023. "Shecession: The Downfall of Colombian Women During the Covid-19 Pandemic," Feminist Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 29(4), pages 158-193, October.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    business cycles; gender; employment;
    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

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