Unemployment Dynamics during Recessions and Recoveries
International Monetary Fund's World Economic Outlook
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Review of Lecture with Ravi Balakrishnan
May 6, 2010
12:30-2:00 p.m.
On Thursday, May 6, 2010, ESMT hosted the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to discuss unemployment dynamics during the recent recession and the current recovery. The speaker IMF senior economist Ravi Balakrishnan had no quick fixes for advanced economies. In the course of his presentation of his and Prakash Kannan’s research for Chapter 3 of IMF’s World Economic Outlook (WEO), it became apparent that while unemployment most likely will remain high through 2011, measures such as short-time work programs in Germany helped stabilize the country’s unemployment rate, which did not rise during, what the IMF refers to as the "Great Recession."
While emerging market countries in Asia are leading the recovery, advanced economies are lagging behind. Balakrishnan pointed out that things have improved somewhat since the last IMF forecast put out in January. However, much will be determined by how countries meet the risks that are still present in the context of economic uncertainty. Measures such as the afore-mentioned short-time work programs should be unwound to help facilitate the reallocation likely needed during the recovery. In the German case, this is already happening.
The lecture and subsequent discussion was moderated by Brooke Unger, German correspondent for The Economist. Many questions from the audience of around 100 reflected the concerns facing Europe, especially in light of the current fiscal troubles facing European Union member states such as Greece.
About the Speaker
Ravi Balakrishnan is a senior economist in the Research Department of the IMF, where he works in the World Economic Studies Division. Mr. Balakrishnan holds a Ph.D. in economics from the London School of Economics. He started his career at the Bank of England and Bank of Spain, before joining the IMF in 2001. Since then, he has worked on various countries, including Bolivia and the United States, before taking up his current position of working on the IMF's World Economic Outlook. His policy and research interests are labor and job dynamics, inflation dynamics, exchange rate dynamics and capital flows, and capital markets and financial systems. His research has been published in the European Economic Review, the Journal of International Money and Finance, and IMF staff papers.
Chapter co-author Prakash Kannan will also be present. Prakash Kannan is an Economist at the Research Department of the International Monetary Fund. He also served as the desk economist for Turkey in the European Department of the IMF. His research interests fall in the general field of international macroeconomics. He has published in the European Economic Review, and has written several book chapters including NBER Conference volumes and the IMF's World Economic Outlook. He has a Ph.D. in Economics from Stanford University a bachelor's degree in Economics from MIT. Prior to his career at the Fund, he was an economist at the Central Bank of Malaysia.
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