REGIONAL AND NATIONAL VARIATIONS IN EMPLOYMENT AND UNEMPLOYMENT – NORTHERN IRELAND: A CASE STUDY
| Date | 01 June 1975 |
| Published date | 01 June 1975 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9485.1975.tb00058.x |
| Author | D. G. Slattery,W. Black |
Scottish
Joiirnal
of
Polirical
Economy
Vol.
XXII,
No.
2,
June 1975
REGIONAL AND NATIONAL VARIATIONS
IN EMPLOYMENT AND UNEMPLOYMENT
-NORTHERN IRELAND:
A
CASE STUDY
W.
BLACK
AND
D.
G.
SLATTERY
I
INTRODUCTION
The general development
of
interest in regional economic problems in the
middle
of
the last decade focused on two main areas, the analysis
of
regional
multipliers' and the analysis of trends and cyclical movements
in
the relation-
ship between national and regional uncmployment.'
Work
on the second
of
these areas confirmed the already widely held view that regions which have
an unemployment rate higher than the national average tend to experience
wider cyclical movements. It also suggested that there was little evidence
of
improvement in regional imbalance despite central government regional
policies.
The hypothesis underlying these studies was that short-term variations
in a region's unemployment are the resultant of adjustments to variations
in national demand due to business fluctuations and government stabilisation
policies. Despite the fact that the link between demand and unemployment
is
a complex one the statistical analyses were conducted solely in terms of
national and regional unemployment. Much
of
the complexity arises from
the fact that variations in national demand
or
cmployment are associated
with changes in regional employment, and both national and regional
employment changes are associated with unemployment changes
in
the
nation and region respectively. The national-regional unemployment
relationship therefore subsumes a national-regional employment relationship
and employment-unemployment relationships at both national and regional
level. Furthermore, there are
no
apparent reasons
for
assuming that the
employment-unemployment relationship is the same for the nation and for
the regions and indeed that it
is
the same for all regions.
A
study which seeks
to
identify the causes
of
regional imbalance should therefore take explicit
account
of
these relationships and
so
attempt to evaluate their impact
on
the
individual regions.
The object
of
the present study is to attempt such an in-depth analysis
of one region-Northern Ireland. The study is concerned with short-term
cyclical movements in employment and unemployment and the argument
should be interpreted in that light.
The hypothesis to be investigated
is
that
a
short-term change in national
employment is associated with a change in regional cmployment
(dER/dE~)
The
seminal paper from which
most
recent
discussion
of
regional multipliers
stems is Archibald (1967).
2 See,
for
example, Thirlwall(1966), Brechling (1967) and Burrows (1968).
195
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