Asimetrías de la Ley de Okun para América Latina. 1980-2016

Abstract

This article considers the asymmetry of Okun's Law for Latin America, for which ten countries in South America were sampled as well as Mexico, Panama and El Salvador, since these countries are representative due to the first having a high level of economic development, the second due to its growth over the past decade and in the case of El Salvador because it is a "dollarized" economy, as is the Ecuadorian case. In this research, two econometric time series models were applied; first, Short-Term Model differences, and secondly, the GAP Long-Term model; for their development annual statistics data collected by the World Bank and the International Labor Organization (ILO) were used. The results of this study demonstrate that at first instance in the differences model there is a negative or inverse relationship between the difference of gross domestic product, except chile and el salvador. The difference in the level of unemployment, which should be interpreted to mean that, by increasing the difference of one of the two factors, be it unemployment or GDP, it will impact indirectly on another indicator respectively. Then the GAP Long -Term model was applied and it was observed that in most of the countries studied there is a balance in the variables used, thus fulfilling the macro-econometric conditions applied. Elasticities found in the model show that the relationship is negative, which validates the Okun theory. It was observed that the elasticities of some countrys are bigger than the rest, so in the course of the article it will be evident.