(第13章-第15章)宏观经济学的数据.ppt

* Unemployment is a serious and complicated problem with a variety of causes. To most effectively address such a problem, we need to break it down and look at each cause separately. We begin by noting that the causes of short-run fluctuations in unemployment are different than the causes of the long-run average unemployment rate, called the “natural rate of unemployment.” The next slide shows U.S. data on both since 1960. * Cyclical unemployment is the gap between the red and blue lines. When the economy is in recession – the bad part of the business cycle - the actual unemployment rate is higher than the natural rate, and cyclical unemployment is positive. When the economy is in the good part of its business cycle, unemployment is below normal and cyclical unemployment is negative. Source: same as textbook. The unemployment rate comes from the Department of Labor and is available at . The natural rate of unemployment series is prepared by the Congressional Budget Office. /Spreadsheets.shtml Thanks to Ken Baker for alerting me to the original CBO source. The natural rate series is also available (with tons of other data) at , though paid subscriptions are required to download in Excel format. (Non-payers can view the data at their site for free.) * In later chapters, we will study short-run economic fluctuations and learn more about the causes and possible cures of cyclical unemployment. For the rest of this chapter, our job is understanding the various causes of the natural rate of unemployment. * * WARNING: If you are teaching with Mankiw for the first time, please note that his definition of structural unemployment may be different than the definition you’ve seen in other textbooks. Other books commonly define structural unemployment as arising from a mismatch between the skills or locations of workers and the skill requirements or locations of jobs. Such textbooks assert that such unemployment results from sectoral shifts. Man