scholarly journals Validity of Okun's law in Sri Lanka

Author(s):  
Perenparaj Nadeshan ◽  
Gnanachandran Gnanachandran

The main goal of our research is to find out a relationship between the unemployment rate and the GDP growth rate in Sri Lanka according to Okun’s law and to know whether it can still be used as the best rule of thumb. This empirical analysis has employed the difference model, dynamic model, Error Correction Model (ECM) and Vector Error Correction Model (VECM) to validate the relationship between the unemployment rate and economic growth suggested by Okun's Law. The study is based on Quarterly data from 2004 Q1 to 2019 Q4. The results obtained through the application of varies econometric techniques such as Ordinary least square (OLS), Engel-Granger approach and cointegration procedure. The study finds that, Okun’s law is supported only by the cointegration analysis as expected by the Okun’s law in Sri Lanka. However, all other versions were reported negative Okun’s law coefficient signs while these results are not statistically significant. Overall this study is not able to found enough evidence to prove the inverse relationship between unemployment rate and economic growth rate in short run and able to found that Okun’s law can still be used as the best rule of thumb to describe the relationship between the unemployment and GDP growth in long term in Sri Lanka.

2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (28) ◽  
pp. 470
Author(s):  
Saleh Al-hosban ◽  
Mohmmad Edienat

The main aim of this study is to empirically examine ,investigate and test the relationship between unemployment rate and economic growth within Jordanian economy over the period of time (1982-2016), in order to examine the validity of Okun’s law, which suggests a negative relationship between unemployment rate and economic growth, several economic methods are employed by using descriptive statistics, as well as some econometric tests, in order to analyze the variables under study . The empirical results of this study show a negative relationship between unemployment and GDP in the period 1982-2016 in Jordanian economy, which is consistent with Okun’s law. In other word, this study offered an additional empirical evidence to confirm the validity of the Okun’s law in the case of Jordan over the period 1982-2016.So any attempt to increase economic growth through some economic policies such as expansion in spending would reduce unemployment rate, where the Okun’s coefficient of GDP with respect to unemployment rate is- 0.004, such that an increase of 100 million Jordanian Dinars in the Real GDP will cause 40% decrease in the unemployment rate, which is about half percent in unemployment rate in the next. The findings of this thesis may help economists and policymakers when adapting policies in order to adjust unemployment level in the economy.


2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 97-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Christl ◽  
Monika Köppl-Turyna ◽  
Dénes Kucsera

AbstractWe estimate the classic and the dynamic variant of Okun’s law for the Austrian labor market. We find that, for recent periods, the growth rate necessary to stabilize the unemployment rate equals 2.8 percent. Moreover, we find that the rate has been growing in recent quarters due to the increasing labor force size and the effects of the crisis. The latest prediction of the employment threshold lies above 3 percent, much above forecasted GDP growth up to 2017.


Author(s):  
Emirgena Nikolli

This thesis studies the relationship between the economic growth and the unemployment rate in Albania. This relation is known as Okun's law, which states that 1 percent decrease in unemployment; GDP will increase by 3 percent. Albania is one of the countries that have a sluggish development and impact of unemployment is negative in the economy of the country. At the same time the economy itself effect the employment of the people. The unemployment occurs when people are without work or seeking work. During recession there is a high unemployment rate. Even some peaks of the development like in the Total Factor Productivity, integration or infrastructure there have been recession and a bad time for the Albania too. This affected the investments, the business and by lowering their profits they are obligated to lay off employees. So the unemployment rate starts to rise up. This study takes in consideration the years from 2000 to 2013 when the unemployment was rising day by day with negative impact in the economy. This thesis introduces the general relationship between gross domestic product and unemployment. The methodology used a simple regression and takes the economic growth as dependent variable and the unemployment rate as independent. The observed result didn't explain the Okun's law for Albania. The main reason is the current crises that prevent the improvement of economic conditions.


2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bilal Kargı

Even though, there are so many so long discussions on the relation between population increase and economic growth, today, general opinion tends to believe that there is a direct relation between population increase and economic growth. This opinion is supported by some empirical studies. Despite an economical growth caused by directly with population growth, it is known that there is a reverse relation between unemployment and growth known as Okun’s Law. This relation, suggesting that every 1 point decrease in unemployment induces a 3 point increase in growth, is tested for many countries. In this study, this hypothesis of Okun is examined and it is found to be true for selected 23 countries, even with the difference in coefficients. At the same time, long term relation between growth and unemployment is tested with the use of time series analysis and long term relation is found for 14 countries. Additionally, tests done for all 34 OECD countries showed that reversed relation between unemployment and growth is valid and they are co-integrated in long run. In this study, countries are categorized according to growth rate as “low”, “normal” and “high” and a consistent unemployment rate for countries with high growth rate could not be seen. In the case of countries with lowest growth rate, generalization that they have quite high unemployment rate can be made.


2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Olumuyiwa Olamade ◽  

Nigeria has been best with the incidence of concurrent unemployment and a good run of economic growth thus calling to question the efficacy of economic growth to create jobs in the country. In this paper, we examine first whether there exists any relationship between economic growth and employment in the manner espoused by Okun’s law and then interpret the coefficient of the relationship as indicative of the capacity of the economy to translate growth into employment. Due to the unreliability of unemployment data in many developing countries we use the growth rate of employment as the dependent variable and thus expect to find a positive relationship with economic growth. A second model was specified with the growth rate of employment-to-population ratio as the dependent variable. Data were extracted from World Development Indicators and Penn’s World Table for 1961 to 2017. All the variables were level stationary from two different tests of their statistical properties. We thus estimate the Ordinary Least Squares for the short-run coefficients and explore the robustness of the ARDL to different orders of integration for the long-run form. Both establish the application of Okun’s law to Nigeria with the employment elasticity of GDP growth too small to generate discernible growth in employment. We estimated an average GDP growth of 16.22% over the long-run for the economy to keep a steady growth in employment.


2020 ◽  
Vol 68 (7-8) ◽  
pp. 484-499
Author(s):  
Vladimir Mihajlović

Starting from the empirically-based postulate that economic growth, through increasing labour demand and employment, reduces the unemployment rate, this study investigates the relationship between real GDP growth and the unemployment rate in the Republic of Serbia. The analysis is motivated by the fact that the unemployment rate in Serbia has significantly decreased over the last decade (especially after 2014), despite relatively modest rates of economic growth. These tendencies indicate the possibility of a nonlinear (asymmetric) relationship between the two variables, which has important implications for designing a more efficient economic and employment policy. Applying both linear and nonlinear Autoregressive Distributed Lags models (ARDL and NARDL) to quarterly data in the 2008-2019 period reveals that the relationship between economic growth and unemployment rate is negative, as suggested by Okun's law, but also that there is a profound asymmetry in this relationship. Namely, a 1% increase in the real output leads to a 4.74% decrease in the unemployment rate, whereas a decrease in output by the same percentage increases the unemployment rate by only 1.52%. Further analysis, based on investigating the relationship between GDP decomposed by the expenditure and production approach, and the unemployment rate, indicates that Okun's law asymmetry in the economy of Serbia is most affected by domestic demand, primarily private and government expenditures on the products of labour-intensive activities, such as services, agriculture, and industry.


2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-36
Author(s):  
Gautam Maharjan

The main objective of this paper is to examine the relationship between tax revenue and economic growth in Nepal. The 43 years' annual time series data from 1974/75 to 2016/17 of GDP, tax revenue and nontax revenue have been used to test the causal relationship of the variables. A unit root test, Engle-Granger’s co-integration and Error Correction Model have been applied for the data analysis. The variables have been found stationary after first differencing I(1) when Augmented Dickey-Fuller unit root test is employed. From Engel-Granger test, it has been found that the variables are co-integrated. The short-term coefficients are not significant, however error correction term (ECT) is significant and contains a negative sign in the error correction model (ECM). It validates the ECM model. The ECT has shown that the annual speed of adjustment from disequilibrium to equilibrium is 34.3 percent. So far as the relationship is concerned, there is a long run relationship between tax revenue and economic growth in Nepal controlling the non-tax revenue. The impact of tax revenue on economic growth could be a good impetus for the policy maker and planner to increase the collection of revenue for the country.


2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. p207
Author(s):  
Josephat Lotto ◽  
Catherine T. Mmari

The main objective of this paper was to examine the impact of domestic debt on economic growth in Tanzania for the period 1990 to 2015 using Ordinary Least Square (OLS) regression method to estimate the effects. The study finds that there is an inverse but insignificant relationship between domestic debt and the economic growth of Tanzania as measured by GDP annual growth. The inverse relationship between domestic debt and GDP may be caused by different factors such as; increased trend in domestic borrowing, government lenders’ profile dominated by commercial banks and non-bank financial institutions which promotes the “crowding out” effect; the nature of the instruments used by the government ; the improper use of the domestic borrowed funds which may include funding budgetary deficits, paying up principal and matured obligations on debt, developing financial markets as well as fund other government operations. Other control variables relate with the GDP as predicted. For example, Inflation (INF) has a negative effect on the GDP growth rate, but the relationship is not statistically significant, while gross capital formation (GCF) has a positive statistically significant effect on GDP growth rate. Furthermore, foreign direct investment (FDI) showed a positive effect on the GDP growth rate and export (X) has a positive effect on GDP growth rate, and the relationship is statistically significant explaining that if a country applied an export-led growth economic strategy it enjoys the gains of participating in the world market. This means that an increase in export stimulates demand for goods which leads to increase in output, and as a country’s output increases, the economic performance also takes a similar trend. Finally, government expenditure (GE) had a negative effect on the GDP growth rate which may be explained by the increased government expenditures which are funded by either tax or borrowing. Therefore, what is required for countries like Tanzania is to have better debt management strategies as well as prudential financial management while maintaining to remain within the internationally acceptable debt level of 45% of GDP and maintain a GDP growth rate of not less than 5%. It is important for the country to realize from where to borrow from, the tenure, the risks involved and limitations to borrowing and thus set the right balance of combination of both kinds of debt. Another requirement is to properly utilize the borrowed funds. The central government’s objective should be to use the funds in more development-oriented projects that bring positive returns to the economic development.  The government should not only create a right environment and policies for investment to attract investment from domestic and foreign sources but also be cautious about the kind of investments that the foreign investors make.


2021 ◽  
pp. 21-41
Author(s):  
Jelena Bjelić

An investment is a factor of the economic growth and a mandatory constituent in the majority of development models. This study analyzes the impact of the gross investment on the economic growth in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) for the period 2005-2017, and provides the assessment of the interdependence of investment and a newly added value in industry. The relationship between the foreign investment and the economic growth is also included. The dependent variables are the GDP growth rate and the added value in industry (as % of GDP). The independent variables are the total investment rate (as % of GDP) and the foreign investment rate (as % of GDP). The hypothesis is that the gross investment and the foreign investment are positively correlated with the GDP growth rate. The investments contribute to a higher newly added value in industry. The results show that the gross investment is a significant factor of the economic growth because there is a high significance and positive correlation between the observed variables (the total investment and the GDP growth). This shows that the investment growth stimulates the economic growth in Bosnia and Herzegovina. But the dynamic analysis as an investment-GDP ratio shows oscillations. The impact of investments on the share of the newly added value in industry is insignificant and negative. The results of the dynamic analysis are similar. The relationship between the variables of the foreign investment rates and the GDP growth is significant and positive. Although the foreign investments are not sufficient, they still contribute, to a certain extent, to the economic growth of BiH.


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