Impact of COVID-19 on the unemployment rate: Empirical application on eighteen MENA countries
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18559/rielf.2022.1.4Keywords:
unemployment rate, lockdown, COVID-19 pandemic, human capitalAbstract
The consequences of the COVID-19 which devastated our planet was disastrous in terms of health and economic situation. The purpose of this article is to study the repercussions of the days of lockdown and the human capital index on the unemployment rate, in general and on young people in particular. The study covers eighteen countries in the MENA region. The econometric results have shown that the human capital index has a negative impact on the overall unemployment rate and on young people specifically. These results also indicated that strict confinement measures increase unemployment rate, unlike soft confinement ones.
Downloads
References
Açikgöz, Ö., & Günay, A. (2020). The early impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the global and Turkish economy. Turkish Journal of Medical Sciences, 50(SI-1), 520‒526.
View in Google Scholar
Allen, L. J. (1994). Some discrete-time SI, SIR, and SIS epidemic models. Mathematical Biosciences, 124(1), 83‒105.
View in Google Scholar
Baker, M. G., Peckham, T. K., & Seixas, N. S. (2020). Estimating the burden of United States workers exposed to infection or disease: A key factor in containing risk of COVID-19 infection. PloS ONE, 15(4). https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal. pone.0232452
View in Google Scholar
Beland, L., A. Brodeur, & T. Wright. (2020). The short-term economic consequences of COVID-19: Exposure to disease, remote work and government response. (IZA Discussion Papers No. 13159).
View in Google Scholar
Brenke, K., Rinne, U., & Zimmermann, K. F. (2013), Short-time work: The German answer to the Great Recession. International Labour Review, 152(2), 287‒305.
View in Google Scholar
Brodeur, A., Gray, D., Islam, A., & Bhuiyan, S. (2021). A literature review of the economics of COVID-19. Journal of Economic Surveys, 35(4), 1007‒1044.
View in Google Scholar
Eichhorst, W., Marx, P., & Rinne, U. (2020). Manoeuvring through the crisis: Labour market and social policies during the COVID-19 pandemic. Intereconomics, 55(6), 375‒380.
View in Google Scholar
Ferguson, N., Laydon, D., Nedjati Gilani, G., Imai, N., Ainslie, K., Baguelin, M., ..., Ghani, A. (2020). Impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to reduce COVID19 mortality and healthcare demand. Imperial College London. https://doi.org/10.25561/77482
View in Google Scholar
Goenka, A. & Liu, L. (2012). Infectious diseases and endogenous fluctuations, Economic Theory, 50(1), 125–149.
View in Google Scholar
Hassan, T. A., Hollander, S., Van Lent, L., Schwedeler, M., & Tahoun, A. (2020). Firm-level exposure to epidemic diseases: COVID-19, SARS, and H1N1. National Bureau of Economic Research. https://doi.org/10.3386/w26971
View in Google Scholar
Hassan, M. K., Rabbani, M. R., & Abdulla, Y. (2021). Socioeconomic impact of COVID-19 in MENA region and the role of islamic finance. International Journal of Islamic Economics and Finance (IJIEF), 4(1), 51‒78.
View in Google Scholar
International Monetary Fund (IMF). (2020). The great lockdown: Worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. Retrieved May 26, 2021 from https://blogs.imf.org/2020/04/14/the-great-lockdown-worst-economic-downturn-since-the-great-depression/
View in Google Scholar
Jonas, O. B. (2013). Pandemic risk. World Development Report 2014 on Risk and Opportunity: Managing Risks for Development. Retrieved from https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/16343/WDR14_bp_Pandemic_Risk_Jonas.pdfsequence=1&isAllowed=y
View in Google Scholar
Joyce, R., & Xu, X. (2020). Sector shutdowns during the coronavirus crisis: Which workers are most exposed?. The Institute for Fiscal Studies. https://fs.org.uk/uploads/BN278-Sector-shutdowns-during-the-coronavirus-crisis.pdf
View in Google Scholar
Kelly, B. D. (2020). Plagues, pandemics and epidemics in Irish history prior to COVID-19 (coronavirus): What can we learn?. Irish Journal of Psychological Medicine, 37(4), 269–274.
View in Google Scholar
Lima, P. C. G. D., & Duran, P. R. F. (2021). Work, inequalities, and precarization: Impacts on Brazil in times of COVID-19 pandemic. Revue Interventions Économiques. Papers in Political Economy, (66), 13‒33.
View in Google Scholar
Luong, T. A., & Nguyen, M. H. (2020). COVID-19, lockdown and labor uncertainty. (Working Paper No. 1137). Toulouse School of Economics.
View in Google Scholar
Our World in Data. (2022). Retrieved April 6, 2022 from https://ourworldindata.org/covid-school-workplace-closures
View in Google Scholar
Padhan, R., & Prabheesh, K. P. (2021). The economics of COVID-19 pandemic: A survey. Economic Analysis and Policy, 70, 220-237.
View in Google Scholar
Shang, Y., Li, H., & Zhang, R. (2021). Effects of pandemic outbreak on economies: Evidence from business history context. Frontiers in Public Health, 9(146), 93‒104.
View in Google Scholar
Su, C. W., Dai, K., Ullah, S., & Andlib, Z. (2021). COVID-19 pandemic and unemployment dynamics in European economies. Economic Research-Ekonomska Istraživanja, 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1080/1331677X.2021.1912627
View in Google Scholar
World Bank. (2020). The Human Capital Index 2020 update: Human capital in the time of COVID-19. Retrieved May 20, 2021 from https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/34432
View in Google Scholar
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2022 Poznań University of Economics and Business
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
