Arin Dube shows that estimates of Okun’s law are inconsistent with the assertion that most of the unemployment problem is structural rather than cyclical:
Historical Patterns, Okun’s Law, and the Great Recession, by Arin Dube: After reading Paul Krugman’s post today, I decided to follow up by actually estimating out-of-sample unemployment rate change forecasts during the Great Recession based on a pre-2007 Okun’s law relationship (i.e., a regression of change in the unemployment rate on percentage change in real GDP).
