New Keynesian NAIRU and the Okun Law: An application for Colombia

Amador-Torres, Juan Sebastián

New Keynesian NAIRU and the Okun Law: An application for Colombia

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Borradores de Economía; No. 1034

Date published

2018-01-16

Date

2018-01-16

Authors

Amador-Torres, Juan Sebastián

Document language

eng

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Las opiniones contenidas en el presente documento son responsabilidad exclusiva de los autores y no comprometen al Banco de la República ni a su Junta Directiva.

The opinions contained in this document are the sole responsibility of the author and do not commit Banco de la República or its Board of Directors.

Abstract

This paper proposes new monthly estimates for the non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment (NAIRU) and the output gap for Colombia. These rely on a New Keynesian small open economy model following González et al (2013), augmented by an Okun’s Law equation. The resulting output gap closely follows the business cycle, as identified by other estimates currently employed by the central bank. The unemployment gap is negatively correlated to the output gap, in a magnitude consistent with simple Okun Law’s estimations. Unlike previous works, this paper presents shocks decompositions, which allow for some economic interpretation of the unemployment dynamics in terms of macroeconomic shocks. This framework might be well suited to evaluate the effects of monetary policy on the labor market, as suggested by an evaluation of forecasting accuracy.