Aggregate demand uncertainty outbreaks and employment hysteresis in G7 countries

Abstract

The slow recovery following the recent financial crisis in many developed countries, and the predictable long lasting economic effects of the Covid-19 pandemic have raised a new interest on the topic of employment hysteresis. In the presence of hysteresis there is no predetermined long-run equilibrium level of aggregate employment. As the economic system is not self-adjusting toward a unique equilibrium, timely, and sustained expansionary macroeconomic policies should be applied to mitigate the impact of negative shocks. The purpose of this paper is to uncover hysteresis effects in the macrodynamics of employment along with variations in its intensity that may result from outbreaks in aggregate demand uncertainty. We estimate a switching employment equation based on the play model of hysteresis, which describes a dynamic process whereby non-convex adjustment costs and uncertainty create intervals of weak reaction of employment to small changes in forcing variables, but spurts in the reaction to large demand shocks. As a novel feature, the estimation allows the presence of structural breaks in the value of the switching parameter of the employment equation due to aggregate demand uncertainty outbreaks. We have concluded that hysteresis effects increased in general in crisis periods associated to outbreaks of uncertainty in aggregate demand.