期刊名称：Euro Area Balance of Payments and International Investment Position Statistics
印刷版ISSN：1830-3420
电子版ISSN：1830-3439
出版年度：2014
出版社：European Central Bank
摘要：This paper examines the usefulness of the Okun relationship as a “rule of thumb” forpredicting changes in unemployment, as a result of changes in output. It argues that adisaggregated version of the Okun relationship – making use of the differentialreaction of unemployment to changes in the various expenditure components of GDP- significantly enhances the capacity of the Okun relationship (in comparison to theaggregate “rule of thumb”) for predicting movements in unemployment. The papertests this hypothesis using a dataset for the 17 euro area countries over the period1996Q1-2013Q4. The results suggest that euro area unemployment is particularlysensitive to movements in the consumption component of GDP, while movements inforeign trade (exports and imports) have a much lower impact on unemploymentdevelopments. This reflects the highly labour-intensive nature of the services thatrepresent the bulk of consumers’ expenditure, while the higher productivitymanufacturing-related content of exports tends to be less labour intensive
关键词：Okun relationship; unemployment; expenditure components of GDP; panel;econometrics.
