IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/gla/glaewp/9802.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Labour Force Participation and the Business Cycle: A Comparative Analysis of Europe, Japan and the United States

Author

Listed:
  • Julia Darby
  • Robert A Hart
  • Michaela Vecchi

Abstract

Using OECD data from 1970 until 1995, we estimate systems of labour force participation equations, disaggregated by age and sex, for the United States, Japan, France and Sweden. We simulate the path of participation rates following shocks to GDP and also test for asymmetric responses to shocks occurring in upward and downward phases of the cycle. Our methodology is especially pertinent to the issue of hidden unemployment and the "discouraged worker effect". We find that this effect is essentially a female phenomenon with a particular concentration among 45 to 54 year olds.

Suggested Citation

  • Julia Darby & Robert A Hart & Michaela Vecchi, 1998. "Labour Force Participation and the Business Cycle: A Comparative Analysis of Europe, Japan and the United States," Working Papers 9802, Business School - Economics, University of Glasgow.
    • Handle: RePEc:gla:glaewp:9802
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.gla.ac.uk/media/media_219041_en.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Robert A Hart & James R Malley, 1993. "Excess Labour and the Business Cycle: A Comparativer Study of Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States," Working Papers Series 93/6, University of Stirling, Division of Economics.
    2. Hodrick, Robert J & Prescott, Edward C, 1997. "Postwar U.S. Business Cycles: An Empirical Investigation," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 29(1), pages 1-16, February.
    3. Killingsworth, Mark R. & Heckman, James J., 1987. "Female labor supply: A survey," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & R. Layard (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 2, pages 103-204, Elsevier.
    4. Harvey, A C & Jaeger, A, 1993. "Detrending, Stylized Facts and the Business Cycle," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 8(3), pages 231-247, July-Sept.
    5. 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.
    6. Siv Gustafsson & Frank Stafford, 1992. "Child Care Subsidies and Labor Supply in Sweden," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 27(1), pages 204-230.
    7. Tachibanaki, Toshiaki & Sakurai, Kojiro, 1991. "Labour supply and unemployment in Japan," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 35(8), pages 1575-1587, December.
    8. Michela VECCHI, 1996. "Increasing Returns versus Externalities: Pro-Cyclical Productivity in US and Japan," Working Papers 83, Universita' Politecnica delle Marche (I), Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche e Sociali.
    9. Gordon, Robert J, 1982. "Why U.S. Wage and Employment Behaviour Differs from That in Britain and Japan," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 92(365), pages 13-44, March.
    10. Connelly, Rachel, 1992. "The Effect of Child Care Costs on Married Women's Labor Force Participation," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 74(1), pages 83-90, February.
    11. repec:bla:econom:v:63:y:1996:i:250:p:325-42 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Tetsuji Yamada & Tadashi Yamada & Guorn Liu, 1990. "Determinants of Saving and Labor Force Participation of the Elderly in Japan," NBER Working Papers 3292, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    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. Sibel Cengiz & Afsin Sahin, 2014. "Modelling nonlinear behavior of labor force participation rate by STAR: An application for Turkey," International Journal of Business and Economic Sciences Applied Research (IJBESAR), Democritus University of Thrace (DUTH), Kavala Campus, Greece, vol. 7(1), pages 113-127, April.
    2. Katarzyna Budnik & Michal Greszta & Michal Hulej & Marcin Kolasa & Karol Murawski & Michal Rot & Bartosz Rybaczyk & Magdalena Tarnicka, 2009. "The new macroeconometric model of the Polish economy," NBP Working Papers 62, Narodowy Bank Polski.
    3. Carlo Altavilla & Matteo Ciccarelli, 2006. "Inflation Forecasts, Monetary Policy and Unemployment Dynamics: Evidence from the US and the Euro Area," Discussion Papers 7_2006, D.E.S. (Department of Economic Studies), University of Naples "Parthenope", Italy.
    4. Provenzano Sandro, 2017. "The Empirics of Hidden Labor Force Dynamics in Germany," Journal of Economics and Statistics (Jahrbuecher fuer Nationaloekonomie und Statistik), De Gruyter, vol. 237(5), pages 373-406, October.
    5. Ewa Gałecka-Burdziak & Marek Góra, 2016. "The impact of easy and early access to old-age benefits on exits from the labour market: a macro-micro analysis," IZA Journal of European Labor Studies, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 5(1), pages 1-18, December.
    6. Ga?ecka-Burdziak, Ewa & Góra, Marek, 2015. "Impacts of the Availability of Old-Age Benefits on Exits from the Labour Market," IZA Discussion Papers 9014, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    7. 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.
    8. Emilio Congregado & Ewa Galecka-Burdziak & Antonio A. Golpe & Robert Pater, 2021. "Separating aggregate discouraged and added worker effects: the case of a former transition country," Oeconomia Copernicana, Institute of Economic Research, vol. 12(3), pages 729-760, September.
    9. Carlo Altavilla & Matteo Ciccarelli, 2008. "Inflation models, optimal monetary policy and uncertain unemployment dynamics: Evidence from the US and the euro area," Discussion Papers 8_2008, D.E.S. (Department of Economic Studies), University of Naples "Parthenope", Italy.

    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. Darby, Julia & Hart, Robert A. & Vecchi, Michela, 2001. "Labour force participation and the business cycle: a comparative analysis of France, Japan, Sweden and the United States," Japan and the World Economy, Elsevier, vol. 13(2), pages 113-133, April.
    2. Mellár, Tamás & Németh, Kristóf, 2018. "A kibocsátási rés becslése többváltozós állapottérmodellekben. Szuperhiszterézis és további empirikus eredmények [Estimating output gap in multivariate state space models. Super-hysteresis and furt," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(6), pages 557-591.
    3. Olivier Guillot, 1996. "Activité féminine et garde des jeunes enfants : une analyse micro-économétrique," Économie et Prévision, Programme National Persée, vol. 122(1), pages 83-94.
    4. Guisinger, Amy Y. & Hernandez-Murillo, Ruben & Owyang, Michael T. & Sinclair, Tara M., 2018. "A state-level analysis of Okun's law," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 239-248.
    5. Perron, Pierre & Wada, Tatsuma, 2016. "Measuring business cycles with structural breaks and outliers: Applications to international data," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(2), pages 281-303.
    6. Vitek, Francis, 2006. "Measuring the Stance of Monetary Policy in a Small Open Economy: A Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium Approach," MPRA Paper 802, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Jesús Cuaresma & Ernest Gnan & Doris Ritzberger-Gruenwald, 2004. "Searching for the natural rate of interest: a euro area perspective," Economic Change and Restructuring, Springer, vol. 31(2), pages 185-204, June.
    8. Drew, Aaron & Hunt, Benjamin, 2000. "Efficient simple policy rules and the implications of potential output uncertainty," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 52(1-2), pages 143-160.
    9. Amado Peiró, 2000. "Economic Comovements In European Countries," Working Papers. Serie EC 2000-19, Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas, S.A. (Ivie).
    10. Maravall, A. & del Rio, A., 2007. "Temporal aggregation, systematic sampling, and the Hodrick-Prescott filter," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 52(2), pages 975-998, October.
    11. Jacobs, Jan & Tassenaar, Vincent, 2004. "Height, income, and nutrition in the Netherlands: the second half of the 19th century," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 2(2), pages 181-195, June.
    12. Schüler, Yves S. & Hiebert, Paul P. & Peltonen, Tuomas A., 2020. "Financial cycles: Characterisation and real-time measurement," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 100(C).
    13. Morana, Claudio, 2024. "A new macro-financial condition index for the euro area," Econometrics and Statistics, Elsevier, vol. 29(C), pages 64-87.
    14. Marianne Simonsen, 2010. "Price of High‐quality Daycare and Female Employment," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 112(3), pages 570-594, September.
    15. Colm Harmon & Claire Finn & Arnaud Chevalier & Tarja Viitanen, 2006. "The economics of early childhood care and education : technical research paper for the National Economic and Social Forum," Open Access publications 10197/671, School of Economics, University College Dublin.
    16. Alexander Tsyplakov, 2011. "An introduction to state space modeling (in Russian)," Quantile, Quantile, issue 9, pages 1-24, July.
    17. Tatsuma Wada & Pierre Perron, 2006. "State Space Model with Mixtures of Normals: Specifications and Applications to International Data," Boston University - Department of Economics - Working Papers Series WP2006-029, Boston University - Department of Economics.
    18. Christina Gathmann & Björn Sass, 2012. "Taxing Childcare: Effects on Family Labor Supply and Children," CESifo Working Paper Series 3776, CESifo.
    19. Richard Dennis, 1997. "A measure of monetary conditions," Reserve Bank of New Zealand Discussion Paper Series G97/1, Reserve Bank of New Zealand.
    20. Woitek, Ulrich, 2003. "Height cycles in the 18th and 19th centuries," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 1(2), pages 243-257, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Participation rates; business cycle; asymmetric responses; discouraged worker effects;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J21 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Force and Employment, Size, and Structure
    • E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles

    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:gla:glaewp:9802. 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: Business School Research Team (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dpglauk.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.