Convergence of gender unemployment gaps in Africa: new evidence from Fourier ADF and KPSS unit root tests with break

Abstract

This article uses four ADF-type of unit root tests and four KPSS-type of stationarity tests to examine whether the gender unemployment gap would converge to zero in Africa. Among these different tests, the two most restricted models, namely the ADF test and the KPSS test, indicate no convergence in the gender unemployment gap in Africa. By contrast, the two most general models, the FADF-SB test and the FKPSS-SB test, indicate that there is convergence in the gender unemployment gap. The discrepancy in the empirical findings could be overcome by setting up an F-test to determine which model specification could be considered the best testing model among the four alternatives in each case. The best model specification from both the ADF-type test and the KPSS-type test offers consistent results that show the convergence of gender unemployment gap in the line of the ‘Law of one unemployment rate’. The findings in this article have significant policy implications.