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The impact of unemployment on economic development in the Visegrad group (V4) countries
Phan, Sreypech
This study has attempted to scrutinize the impact of unemployment on economic development in the Visegrad (V4) countries comprising the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia, using time series data obtained from the World Development Indicators over a 29-year period from 1993 to 2021. This study has employed the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) technique for empirical investigation. GDP growth rate is a dependent variable employed as a proxy for economic development. In the present study, the explanatory variables are unemployment, inflation, and the labor force. The empirical findings indicate that the long-term relationship between economic growth and various independent variables differs significantly across four countries. In the Czech Republic, inflation and unemployment negatively affect economic growth in the long run. In Hungary, unemployment has a strong negative impact on economic growth, while the effect of inflation and the labor force on GDP is uncertain. In Poland, the labor force has a positive impact on GDP, while unemployment has a negative impact. In Slovakia, only the labor force has a negative impact on GDP in the long run. In the short run, the study found that unemployment had a significant negative impact on GDP in all four countries, while labor force and inflation had significant positive and negative effects, respectively, only in the Czech Republic and Poland. Additionally, the lagged values of unemployment had significant effects on current GDP in the Czech Republic, Poland, and Slovakia. The findings suggest that unemployment is an important determinant of economic growth in the short term in all four countries, while the impact of labor force and inflation on GDP is less clear, as they only have significant effects in some countries. The study provides insights into the determinants of economic growth in four Central European countries and highlights the importance of the unemployment rate as a short-term determinant of economic growth in all four countries. The study's findings suggest that policymakers in these countries should prioritize policies aimed at reducing unemployment to promote economic growth. Additionally, the study's findings can be valuable to researchers and policymakers seeking to understand the economic dynamics of Central European countries and design effective policies to promote economic growth.
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