Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research - Research Publications

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Baynesian evidence on the structure of unemployment

Summers, Peter M. ( 2003-02)

This paper presents a Bayesian assessment of the likelihood of unit roots in the unemployment rates of 16 OECD countries. Bayesian techniques for detecting multiple structural breaks in time series have recently been developed by Wang and Zivot (2000). I apply these tests to a data set recently analyzed by Papell et al (2000). I also treat the number of structural breaks as an additional parameter to be estimated. I find virtually no support for unit root hysteresis in OECD unemployment rates, this result is very robust to the choice of prior
Labour Market Analysis with VAR Models

SUMMERS, PETER ( 2000-09)

This paper provides an overview of how labour market analysis can be conducted in the context of VAR-based models. The examples presented here show that these methods are quite flexible, and capable of addressing a wide variety of theoretical and policy-related issues. Specifically, the various techniques are illustrated in models which: examine the dynamics of gross job flows; assess the relationship between real wages and unemployment; quantify the contribution of sectoral shocks to the number of people unemployed by duration of unemployment; examine the relative contributions of discouraged worker effects, insider effects, etc. on the persistence of unemployment; and analyse the effects of labour market shocks in the OECD countries.