IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp127.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Characteristics of Unemployment Dynamics: The Chain Reaction Approach

Author

Listed:
  • Karanassou, Marika

    (Queen Mary, University of London)

  • Snower, Dennis J.

    (Hertie School of Governance)

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyze and estimate salient characteristics of unemployment dynamics. Movements in unemployment are viewed as ‘ ‘ chain reactions’’ of responses to labor market shocks, working their way through systems of interacting lagged adjustment processes. In the context of estimated labor market systems for Germany, the UK, and the US, we construct aggregate measures of unemployment responses to temporary and permanent shocks. These measures are temporal (depicting how long it takes for unemployment to reach long-run equilibrium) and quantitative (depicting the cumulative amount of unused labor resources generated in the aftermath of a shock). Furthermore, we estimate the contributions of individual lagged adjustments to these aggregate measures. Our empirical results indicate that (i) lagged adjustment processes play an important part in explaining how temporary and permanent shocks affect unemployment, (ii) temporary and permanent shocks can yield quite different inter-country comparisons of unemployment effects, and (iii) the quantitative and temporal measures can also yield markedly different inter-country comparisons. This analysis provides insights into the driving forces underlying the movements of unemployment in the countries above.

Suggested Citation

  • Karanassou, Marika & Snower, Dennis J., 2000. "Characteristics of Unemployment Dynamics: The Chain Reaction Approach," IZA Discussion Papers 127, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp127
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp127.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Taylor, John B, 1979. "Staggered Wage Setting in a Macro Model," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 69(2), pages 108-113, May.
    2. Pesaran, M.H. & Shin, Y., 1995. "An Autoregressive Distributed Lag Modelling Approach to Cointegration Analysis," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 9514, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    3. Pesaran, M. H. & Shin, Y. & Smith, R. J., 1996. "Testing for the 'Existence of a Long-run Relationship'," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 9622, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    4. Lindbeck, Assar & Snower, Dennis J, 1987. "Strike and Lock-Out Threats and Fiscal Policy," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 39(4), pages 760-784, December.
    5. repec:bla:scandj:v:91:y:1989:i:2:p:371-96 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. 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.
    7. Lindbeck, Assar & Snower, Dennis J, 1994. "How Are Product Demand Changes Transmitted to the Labour Market?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 104(423), pages 386-398, March.
    8. repec:crs:wpaper:9645 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Blanchard, Olivier J. & Summers, Lawrence H., 1987. "Hysteresis in unemployment," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 31(1-2), pages 288-295.
    10. Lindbeck, Assar & Snower, Dennis J., 1987. "Union activity, unemployment persistence and wage-employment ratchets," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 31(1-2), pages 157-167.
    11. repec:bla:econom:v:45:y:1978:i:180:p:329-45 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Pesaran, M Hashem, 1997. "The Role of Economic Theory in Modelling the Long Run," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 107(440), pages 178-191, January.
    13. Lindbeck, Assar & Snower, Dennis J, 1990. "Cooperation, Harassment, and Involuntary Unemployment: Reply," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(3), pages 631-636, June.
    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. Roberto Bande & Marika Karanassou, 2009. "Labour market flexibility and regional unemployment rate dynamics: Spain 1980–1995," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 88(1), pages 181-207, March.
    2. Xavier Raurich & Hector Sala & Valeri Sorolla, 2009. "Labour market effects of public capital stock: evidence for the Spanish private sector," International Review of Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(1), pages 1-18.
    3. Marika Karanassou & Hector Sala & Dennis J. Snower, 2010. "Phillips Curves And Unemployment Dynamics: A Critique And A Holistic Perspective," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 24(1), pages 1-51, February.
    4. Roberto Bande, 2002. "Ajustes Dinámicos en las Tasas de Paro: España vs. Portugal," Documentos de trabajo - Analise Economica 0020, IDEGA - Instituto Universitario de Estudios e Desenvolvemento de Galicia.
    5. Roberto Bande & Marika Karanassou, 2014. "Spanish Regional Unemployment Revisited: The Role of Capital Accumulation," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 48(11), pages 1863-1883, November.
    6. Xavier Raurich & Hector Sala & Valeri Sorolla, "undated". "Employment and public capital in Spain," Working Papers 2001-21, FEDEA.
    7. M. Sylvina Porras-Arena & Mauricio A. Suárez Cal, 2021. "What’s behind Okun’s law? A multiple equation approach to the Uruguayan labour market," Documentos de Trabajo (working papers) 21-30, Instituto de Economía - IECON.
    8. Snower, Dennis & Karanassou, Marika & Sala, Hector, 2004. "Unemployment in the EU: Institutions, Prices and Growth," CEPR Discussion Papers 4243, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    9. Marika Karanassou & Hector Sala & Dennis J. Snower, 2003. "Unemployment in the European Union: Institutions, Prices, and Growth," Working Papers 493, Queen Mary University of London, School of Economics and Finance.
    10. Roberto Bande & Marika Karanassou, 2009. "Labour market flexibility and regional unemployment rate dynamics: Spain 1980–1995," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 88(1), pages 181-207, March.

    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. Roberto Bande, 2002. "Ajustes Dinámicos en las Tasas de Paro: España vs. Portugal," Documentos de trabajo - Analise Economica 0020, IDEGA - Instituto Universitario de Estudios e Desenvolvemento de Galicia.
    2. Karanassou, Marika & Sala, Hector & Snower, Dennis J., 2005. "A reappraisal of the inflation-unemployment tradeoff," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 21(1), pages 1-32, March.
    3. repec:clr:wugarc:y:1993:v:19i:4p:461 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Karanassou, Marika & Sala, Hector & Snower, Dennis J., 2008. "Long-run inflation-unemployment dynamics: The Spanish Phillips curve and economic policy," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 279-300.
    5. Marika Karanassou & Hector Sala & Dennis Snower, 2007. "The macroeconomics of the labor market: three fundamental views," Portuguese Economic Journal, Springer;Instituto Superior de Economia e Gestao, vol. 6(3), pages 151-180, December.
    6. Roberto BANDE & Dolores RIVEIRO, 2013. "The Consumption-Investment-Unemployment Relationship In Spain: An Analysis With Regional Data," Theoretical and Practical Research in the Economic Fields, ASERS Publishing, vol. 4(1), pages 5-24.
    7. Dennis J. Snower, 1993. "Insider-Outsider-Beziehungen und Einkommensverteilung," Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft - WuG, Kammer für Arbeiter und Angestellte für Wien, Abteilung Wirtschaftswissenschaft und Statistik, vol. 19(4), pages 461-469.
    8. Martin Leites & Sylvina Porras, 2013. "El enfoque de la Reacción en Cadena: una aplicación para explicar la dinámica del desempleo en Uruguay," Documentos de Trabajo (working papers) 13-11, Instituto de Economía - IECON.
    9. Hofer, Helmut & Kunst, Robert M. & Schwarzbauer, Wolfgang & Schuh, Ulrich & Snower, Dennis J., 2007. "Some Evidence on the Relevance of the Chain-reaction Theory in Selected Countries," Economics Series 207, Institute for Advanced Studies.
    10. Johannes W. Fedderke & John M. Luiz, 2005. "Does Human Generate Social and Institutional Capital? Exploring Evidence From Time Series Data in a Middle Income Country," Working Papers 029, Economic Research Southern Africa.
    11. Ernst Fehr & Jean-Robert Tyran, 1999. "Does Money Illusion Matter? An Experimental Approach," CESifo Working Paper Series 184, CESifo.
    12. Marika Karanassou & Hector Sala & Dennis J. Snower, 2010. "Phillips Curves And Unemployment Dynamics: A Critique And A Holistic Perspective," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 24(1), pages 1-51, February.
    13. Dinand Webbink & Pierre Koning & Sunčica Vujić & Nicholas G. Martin, 2013. "Why Are Criminals Less Educated than Non-Criminals? Evidence from a Cohort of Young Australian Twins," Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 29(1), pages 115-144, February.
    14. Kai-Uwe Kuuhn & A. Jorge Padilla, 2002. "Union Power, Replacement and Labour Market Dynamics," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 112(479), pages 317-343, April.
    15. Fedderke, J.W. & Perkins, P. & Luiz, J.M., 2006. "Infrastructural investment in long-run economic growth: South Africa 1875-2001," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 34(6), pages 1037-1059, June.
    16. Kevin S. Nell, 2006. "Structural Change And Nonlinearities In A Phillips Curve Model For South Africa," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 24(4), pages 600-617, October.
    17. Ernst Fehr & Jean-Robert Tyran, 2001. "Does Money Illusion Matter?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(5), pages 1239-1262, December.
    18. Xavier Raurich & Hector Sala & Valeri Sorolla, "undated". "Employment and public capital in Spain," Working Papers 2001-21, FEDEA.
    19. Pesaran, M. Hashem & Shin, Y. & Smith, R.J., 1999. "Bounds Testing Approaches to the Analysis of Long-run Relationships," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 9907, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    20. Alogoskoufis, George & Malliaris, A.G. & Stengos, Thanasis, 2023. "The scope and methodology of economic and financial asymmetries," The Journal of Economic Asymmetries, Elsevier, vol. 27(C).
    21. Rodolphe Dos Santos Ferreira, 1999. "La relations salaire-emploi sous l'éclairage de la concurrence imparfaite," Cahiers d'Économie Politique, Programme National Persée, vol. 34(1), pages 15-40.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Unemployment; natural rate hypothesis; labor markets; employment; adjustment costs;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J32 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Nonwage Labor Costs and Benefits; Retirement Plans; Private Pensions
    • J60 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - General
    • J64 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Unemployment: Models, Duration, Incidence, and Job Search
    • E30 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - General (includes Measurement and Data)
    • E37 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Forecasting and Simulation: Models and Applications

    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:iza:izadps:dp127. 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: Holger Hinte (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaade.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.