•  
  •  
 

ORCID

Beatrice Pierluigi 0000-0003-0905-6409

Keywords

Labour market; Forecasting; Kalman Filter

Abstract

A small labour market model for the six largest euro-area countries (Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and Belgium) is estimated in a state space framework. The model entails, in the long run, four driving forces: trend labour force, trend labour productivity, long-run inflation rate and trend hours worked. The short run dynamics is governed by a VAR model including six shocks. The state-space framework is convenient for the decomposition of endogenous variables in trends and cycles, for shock decomposition, for incorporating external judgment, and for running conditional projections. The forecast performance of the model is rather satisfactory. The model is used to carry out a policy experiment with the objective of investigating whether euro-area labour markets react differently to a reduction in labour costs. Results suggest that, following the 2008-2009 recession, moderate wage growth would significantly help delivering a more job-intense recovery.

First Page

34

Last Page

60

Page Count

27

Received Date

13 May 2014

Revised Date

15 July 2014

Accept Date

27 October 2014

Online Available Date

19 November 2014

DOI

10.7172/2353-6845.jbfe.2014.2.2

JEL Code

C51; C53; E17; J21

Publisher

University of Warsaw

Share

COinS