Structural Breaks in Unemployment: Evidence for Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Romania and Slovenia.

Melina Dritsaki & ChaidoDritsaki

Abstract

ThispaperdeterminesendogenouslythetimeofstructuralbreaksinunemploymentforBalkancountries – member countries of European Union- during the period 1991-2019. Using Zivotand Andrews (1992) approach and Perronand Vogelsang (1992) approach, we find that these countries experienced structural breaks in different time periods at the end of 2000 and during 2010. The Structural Variations Signaled a sharp increase of unemployment which happened due to worldwide financial crisis in the USA 2007, due to Eurozone crisis in the beginning of 2009 as well as due to the Greek debt crisis which has started during the last quarter of 2008 until the end of the Third Memorandum at the end of 2019. Applying the above Endogenous Structural Tests, we detect different structural breaks in unemployment for each examined country.