Abstract
The paper investigates Scandinavian countries and their male and female unemployment rates. Okun’s law is used to estimate age cohort and gender-specific Okun coefficients to make inference about the business-cycle dependence of young peoples’ unemployment across Scandinavian countries. Results show that men have higher Okun coefficients in absolute terms. Thus, their unemployment rate reacts more strongly to any change in GDP.
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Notes
EU15 includes all countries that were members of the EU before the eastern enlargement in May 2004. A more detailed and country-specific analysis of major EU15 countries is found in Hutengs and Stadtmann (2013).
Unemployment rates are based on International Labour Organisation (ILO) standards, ensuring comparability among different countries.
The end date (2011) is determined by data availability at the time of the study. Countries included in the study with number of observations per cohort: Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, EU15 (28 years) and Iceland (22 years).
Estimation results are obtained through linear regression with Prais-Winsten standard errors.
Significance test results are available from the authors on request.
Own calculations based on Eurostat data: Employment by sex, age and economic activity (from 2008 onwards, NACE Rev. 2) – 1000 [lfsa_egan2]. See Signorelli et al. (2012) for a discussion about the impact of crises on females.
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Hutengs, O., Stadtmann, G. Age- and Gender-Specific Unemployment in Scandinavian Countries: An Analysis based on Okun’s Law. Comp Econ Stud 56, 567–580 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1057/ces.2014.22
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/ces.2014.22