COINTEGRATION BETWEEN WAGES, LABOR PRODUCTIVITY, YOUTH ACTIVITY RATE AND THE YOUTH UNEMPLOYMENT RATE: AN ECONOMETRIC APPROACH

A review of the specialized literature regarding the youth unemployment rate reveals that it is approached both as an independent variable—aimed at highlighting the impact of its level and evolution on economic growth and development—and as a dependent variable, with emphasis placed on the analysis of its determinants. The present study follows this line of research, with net earnings, labor productivity, and the youth activity rate being analyzed as influencing factors of the youth unemployment rate. Using a VAR (Vector Autoregression) model covering a 29-year period (1996–2024), it was demonstrated that, in the case of Romania, the identification of a dependency relationship among the analyzed variables is limited to the short-term influence exerted by the youth unemployment rate on the activity rate.