The relationship between economic growth and unemployment has long been a central concern of macroeconomics, particularly for policymakers seeking to balance objectives of stability and full employment. One of the most enduring contributions to this discussion is Okun’s Law, named after the American economist Arthur M. Okun, who first articulated the relationship in the early 1960s. While not a structural law in the sense of immutable causation, Okun’s Law provides a robust empirical regularity linking changes in output to changes in unemployment. Its simplicity and intuitive appeal have made it a cornerstone of applied macroeconomic analysis, even as its exact parameters vary across time and context.
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