Are unemployment rates stationary in Asia-Pacific countries? New findings from Fourier ADF test

This article examines whether the unemployment rates in five Asia-Pacific countries can be described as a stationary process. It employs a newly developed nonlinear Fourier ADF test for this purpose. The findings indicated that South Korea’s unemployment rate could be described as a stationary process; the unemployment rates in Australia and Hong Kong could be considered as a stationary process around the structural breaks; in China and Japan the unemployment rates exhibited a weak tendency to return to equilibrium level.