We estimate Okun's law, the negative relationship between output and the unemployment rate, at the sector level for the US, the UK, Japan, and Switzerland to test several hypotheses that may explain why the aggregate Okun's coeffcients are different across countries. Specifically, we show that...

Since early 90s, the issue of income convergence across regions has been widely discussed in a number of papers, both looking at long-term tendencies and trying to establish the role played by several socio-economic determinants. Much less attention has instead been devoted to the analysis of...