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An Evaluation of Inertia Models of Unemployment
Author(s) -
Le Anh T.,
Miller Paul W.
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
australian economic review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.308
H-Index - 29
eISSN - 1467-8462
pISSN - 0004-9018
DOI - 10.1111/1467-8462.00149
Subject(s) - employability , unemployment , explanatory power , inertia , economics , sample (material) , econometrics , labour economics , productivity , demographic economics , macroeconomics , economic growth , philosophy , chemistry , physics , epistemology , classical mechanics , chromatography
Two approaches have been used to model unemployment. The first, conventional, approach involves linking the unemployment outcome to observed indices of productivity, structural factors and discrimination such as educational attainment, location and birthplace. The second approach, the inertia model, involves using a person's labour market history as a way of including in unemployment models information on the ‘unobservables’ that influence employability. This paper evaluates the performance of both models of unemployment. The results provide unambiguous support for the inertia model when modelling unemployment. The inertia model has higher explanatory power, higher within‐sample prediction rate success and fewer out‐of‐sample forecasting errors than the conventional model. The estimates from the inertia model can be used to provide quite accurate predictions of the risk of becoming unemployed. This is important if individuals at high risk of becoming unemployed are to be targeted for labour market assistance.