Bounds Test Approach to Cointegration Analysis of the Relationship between Unemployment and Economic Growth: Evidence from Iran

GDP growth and unemployment rate are both important factors that characterize economies. Okun (1962) examined data about GDP and unemployment rate and found that there was a negative relationship between these two variables. After that, economists reexamined this relationship and presented it in different forms such as difference version, gap version and production function form. Because of much debate that is done in recent years regarding the labour market, in this study with the aim of presenting scientific analysis of current conditions in Iranian economy, we used pesaran et al (2001) approach to estimate long-run and short-runOkun coefficients in an ARDL model and the data is for the period of 1974-2011. We found that there is long run relationship between variables in three models that we used. The results show that to reduse the unemployment rate to less than %10, GDP growth rate must be over %10. These results points to deterioration of current economic conditions. At the end, Analysis of Granger causality showed that there are unidirectional causality relationships in all three forms of Okun’s law.