IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/eer/wpalle/13-04e.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Unemployment and output dynamics in CIS countries: Okun's law revisited

Author

Listed:
  • Ibragimov Marat
  • Jovlon Karimov
  • Elena Permyakova

Abstract

Okun’s law is a well-known relationship between the change in the unemployment rate and output growth. The main objective of the study is to provide a rigorous econometric analysis of Okun’s law for several CIS countries using different models and econometric methods. The paper further focuses on the analysis of the behavior of unemployment and Gross Domestic Product in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Ukraine and Uzbekistan in different periods of their economic development during 2000-2010. The traditional approach to Okun’s law estimation using OLS regressions does not account for possible endogeneity of regressors and the implied inconsistency of the estimates obtained. These problems point out to incorrectness of applications of the standard OLS estimation techniques. Our study addresses these issues by using econometrically justified instrumental variable regression methods. The report provides the results and discussions on the practical use of Okun’s relationships for evaluation of average effects of economic growth on the unemployment rate, and vice versa; importance of accounting for confidence intervals in applications of Okun’s models to economic development analysis and cross-country comparisons; as well as those on the value of the models for economic forecasting and policy decisions. We also discuss in detail the results of formal econometric tests and economic motivation for validity of instrumental variables used in the study. The formal econometric tests, together with economic arguments, allow us to determine the most appropriate Okun-type models for each of the CIS countries under consideration.

Suggested Citation

  • Ibragimov Marat & Jovlon Karimov & Elena Permyakova, 2013. "Unemployment and output dynamics in CIS countries: Okun's law revisited," EERC Working Paper Series 13/04e, EERC Research Network, Russia and CIS.
    • Handle: RePEc:eer:wpalle:13/04e
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://eercnetwork.com/default/download/creater/working_papers/file/3433021ea9342d783f936ffb187518a19b4e13b0.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alexander Tsyplakov, 2007. "A guide to the world of instruments (in Russian)," Quantile, Quantile, issue 2, pages 21-47, March.
    2. Kaufman, Roger T., 1988. "An international comparison of Okun's laws," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(2), pages 182-203, June.
    3. Prachowny, Martin F J, 1993. "Okun's Law: Theoretical Foundations and Revised Estimates," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 75(2), pages 331-336, May.
    4. Stanislav Anatolyev, 2007. "Optimal instruments (in Russian)," Quantile, Quantile, issue 2, pages 61-69, March.
    5. Dominik Enste & Friedrich Schneider, 2002. "Hiding in the Shadows; The Growth of the Underground Economy," IMF Economic Issues 30, International Monetary Fund.
    6. Brian Silverstone & Richard Harris, 2001. "Testing for asymmetry in Okun's law: A cross-country comparison," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 5(2), pages 1-13.
    7. Weber, Christian E, 1995. "Cyclical Output, Cyclical Unemployment, and Okun's Coefficient: A New Approach," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 10(4), pages 433-445, Oct.-Dec..
    8. Tito Boeri & Katherine Terrell, 2002. "Institutional Determinants of Labor Reallocation in Transition," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 16(1), pages 51-76, Winter.
    9. Edward S. Knotek, 2007. "How useful is Okun's law?," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, vol. 92(Q IV), pages 73-103.
    10. Peter Ebbes, 2007. "A non-technical guide to instrumental variables and regressor-error dependencies (in Russian)," Quantile, Quantile, issue 2, pages 3-20, March.
    11. Adrian Pagan, 2007. "Weak instruments (in Russian)," Quantile, Quantile, issue 2, pages 71-81, March.
    12. Mr. Friedrich Schneider & Dominik Enste, 2002. "Hiding in the Shadows: The Growth of the Underground Economy," IMF Economic Issues 2002/001, International Monetary Fund.
    13. Gimpelson, Vladimir & Kapeliushnikov, Rostislav, 2011. "Labor Market Adjustment: Is Russia Different?," IZA Discussion Papers 5588, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    14. Izyumov, Alexei & Vahaly, John, 2002. "The Unemployment-Output Tradeoff in Transition Economies: Does Okun's Law Apply?," Economic Change and Restructuring, Springer, vol. 35(4), pages 317-331.
    15. V. Gimpel’son & R. Kapelyushnikov., 2006. "Non-standard Employment and the Russian Labor Market," VOPROSY ECONOMIKI, N.P. Redaktsiya zhurnala "Voprosy Economiki", vol. 1.
    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. de Mendonça, Helder Ferreira & de Oliveira, Diego S.P., 2019. "Firms' confidence and Okun's law in OECD countries," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 98-107.
    2. KARGI, Bilal, 2014. "Okun’s Law and Long Term Co-Integration Analysis for OECD Countries (1987-2012)," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 119, pages 77-85.

    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. Antal, Miklós, 2014. "Green goals and full employment: Are they compatible?," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 276-286.
    2. Durech, Richard & Minea, Alexandru & Mustea, Lavinia & Slusna, Lubica, 2014. "Regional evidence on Okun's Law in Czech Republic and Slovakia," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 57-65.
    3. Costas KARFAKIS & Constantinos KATRAKILIDIS & Eftychia TSANANA, 2014. "Does output predict unemployment? A look at Okun's law in Greece," International Labour Review, International Labour Organization, vol. 153(3), pages 421-433, September.
    4. Giorgio Canarella & Stephen M. Miller, 2017. "Did Okun’s law die after the Great Recession?," Business Economics, Palgrave Macmillan;National Association for Business Economics, vol. 52(4), pages 216-226, October.
    5. Esteban Ferro & Thomas Farole & Veronica Michel Gutierrez, 2017. "Job Creation in the Private Sector," World Bank Publications - Reports 28370, The World Bank Group.
    6. João Tovar Jalles, 2019. "On the Time‐Varying Relationship between Unemployment and Output: What shapes it?," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 66(5), pages 605-630, November.
    7. Ian H.K. Leow, 2004. "A Simple Dynamic Model of Big-push," Econometric Society 2004 Australasian Meetings 218, Econometric Society.
    8. Giovanni BUSETTA & Dario CORSO, 2008. "La legge di Okun: asimmetrie e differenziali territoriali in Italia," Working Papers 320, Universita' Politecnica delle Marche (I), Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche e Sociali.
    9. Roger, Perman & Jean-Philippe, Boussemart & Walter, Briec & Christophe, Tavéra, 2013. "How do technical change and technological distance influence the size of the Okun’s Law coefficient?," SIRE Discussion Papers 2013-60, Scottish Institute for Research in Economics (SIRE).
    10. Irina SyssoyevaMasson & João Sousa Andrade, 2017. "Are PIIGS so Different? An Empirical Analysis of Demand and Supply Shocks," Panoeconomicus, Savez ekonomista Vojvodine, Novi Sad, Serbia, vol. 64(2), pages 189-222, March.
    11. Paramsothy Silvapulle & Imad A. Moosa & Mervyn J. Silvapulle, 2004. "Asymmetry in Okun's law," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 37(2), pages 353-374, May.
    12. Eduardo Loría & Emmanuel Salas, 2014. "A Nonlinear Relationship: Unemployment and Economic Growth (Construction Sector) in Spain, 1995.1–2012.2," International Advances in Economic Research, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 20(4), pages 439-453, November.
    13. João Sousa Andrade, 2009. "The PIGS, does the Group Exist? An empirical macroeconomic analysis based on the Okun Law," GEMF Working Papers 2009-11, GEMF, Faculty of Economics, University of Coimbra.
    14. Ngoo Yee Ting & Loi Siew Ling, 2011. "Okun’S Law In Malaysia: An Autoregressive Distributed Lag (Ardl) Approach With Hodrick-Prescott (Hp) Filter," Journal of Global Business and Economics, Global Research Agency, vol. 2(1), pages 95-103, January.
    15. Mutascu, Mihai & Sokic, Alexandre, 2021. "Okun's law in the US: New insights in time and frequency," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 207-222.
    16. Shabir Mohsin Hashmi & Ali Gul Khushik & Muhammad Akram Gilal & Zhao Yongliang, 2021. "The Impact of GDP and Its Expenditure Components on Unemployment Within BRICS Countries: Evidence of Okun’s Law From Aggregate and Disaggregated Approaches," SAGE Open, , vol. 11(2), pages 21582440211, June.
    17. Celia Melguizo, 2017. "An analysis of Okun’s law for the Spanish provinces," Review of Regional Research: Jahrbuch für Regionalwissenschaft, Springer;Gesellschaft für Regionalforschung (GfR), vol. 37(1), pages 59-90, February.
    18. Bande, Roberto & Martín-Román, Ángel, 2018. "Regional differences in the Okun’s Relationship: New Evidence for Spain (1980-2015)," INVESTIGACIONES REGIONALES - Journal of REGIONAL RESEARCH, Asociación Española de Ciencia Regional, issue 41, pages 137-165.
    19. Pagliari Carmen & Mattoscio Nicola & Odoardi Iacopo & Tenerelli Fabiana, 2013. "Stability, Bifurcations And Chaos In Unemployment Non-Linear Dynamics," Annals of Faculty of Economics, University of Oradea, Faculty of Economics, vol. 1(1), pages 736-745, July.
    20. Rui M. Pereira, 2013. "Okun's Law across the Business Cycle and during the Great Recession: A Markov Switching Analysis," Working Papers 139, Department of Economics, College of William and Mary.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C26 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Instrumental Variables (IV) Estimation
    • C51 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling - - - Model Construction and Estimation
    • C53 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling - - - Forecasting and Prediction Models; Simulation Methods
    • E23 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Production
    • J64 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Unemployment: Models, Duration, Incidence, and Job Search

    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:eer:wpalle:13/04e. 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: Anton Pashchenko (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.eercnetwork.com .

    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.