Neues von der NAIRU?

This paper is devoted to a new estimation of the non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment (NAIRU) for the West German Economy 1980 to 1998. The novelty of the paper is the estimation of a time-varying NAIRU for West Germany employing the Kalman method together with confidence intervals based on the application of a residual based bootstrap. As a result, the NAIRU for 1998 is estimated to lie between 7.9 and 8.5 percent. However, based on a presentation of the theoretical framework and a discussion of serious methodological problems the paper emphasizes several caveats which leave some doubts about the usefulness of the value of NAIRU estimates as guides for economic policy.