Journal Article

Explaining unemployment: sectoral vs aggregate shocks


Abstract: We include a stock market-based measure of sectoral shocks in a small VAR to examine the role played by these shocks in explaining the behavior of the unemployment rate. Sectoral shocks explain a significant proportion of the variation in the unemployment rate - especially the long-duration unemployment rate - even though other kinds of shocks (such as shocks to monetary policy, defense expenditures, and oil prices) are allowed to affect the unemployment rate. A historical decomposition reveals that recession, and they explain only a modest part of the rise in unemployment over the 1990 recession.

Access Documents

File(s): File format is text/html https://www.frbsf.org/wp-content/uploads/3-15.pdf
Description: Full Text

Authors

Bibliographic Information

Provider: Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco

Part of Series: Economic Review

Publication Date: 1997

Pages: 3-15

Order Number: 1