The Relationships among Unemployment, Income Distribution and Effective Demand: A Post-Keynesian SVAR Approach

This research aims to determine whether the employment in Iran is affected by goods market based on post-Keynesians theory, or by labor market based on neoclassical theory. Using time series data on profit share, capital accumulation, unemployment rate and capacity utilization in a structural vector auto-regression (SVAR) model, this article evaluates the linkages among unemployment, income distribution and effective demand in Iran during 1967-2013. The results show that an increase in capital accumulation in goods market leads to significant decrease in unemployment rate. In other words, according to the post-Keynesians theory, unemployment in Iran is demand-induced. On the contrary, according to neoclassical theory, income redistribution in favor of profits (change of real wage in labor market) can reduce unemployment directly due to substitution between labor and capital or indirectly through increasing capital accumulation and/or rising capacity utilization. Therefore, in order to pass recession and to increase employment we can focus on goods market by increasing investment and income redistribution in favor of profits.