Recent Impacts of Selected Development Indicators on Unemployment Rate: Focusing the SEE Countries

Abstract

The article investigates the relationship between unemployment rate and development indicators: (1) the GDP per capita in Purchasing Power Parities (PPP in current international $); and (2) the Internet penetration rate, defined as the percentage of Internet users per 100 people. For 34 countries in 2013, only two simple linear regression models based on natural logarithms of data and the Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) estimator appeared to be useful. The simple linear regression "Model 1" shows a negative correlation between the main variable under study ln(Y_UemRate) and the regressor ln(X_GDPpc), explaining nearly half of the total variation. The simple linear regression "Model 2" shows a negative correlation between ln(Y_UemRate) and ln(X_IntUse), explaining 27 % of the total sum of squares. Regarding clustering of 34 countries based on three variables, the Ward linkage and squared Euclidean distances gave an interesting four-cluster solution. The South-East European (SEE), and especially to the Western Balkan’s countries (WBC) are focused. These countries, spread in three clusters, are not homogeneous. Bosnia and Herzegovina and R. Macedonia are with Spain and Greece, all having difficult economic situation. Albania, Montenegro and Serbia are with Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey, all being the SEEC. Croatia is with more developed Italy, Cyprus and Poland, and with less developed Portugal. Central European Slovenia, joined more developed countries of that area, but the most developed European countries comprised a cluster of their own.