Unemployment in Greece: Evidence from Greek regions using panel unit root tests

•We examine the nature of unemployment rates in the 13 regions of Greece using quarterly and annual data.•We apply recently developed panel unit-root tests accounting for structural breaks, heterogeneity and cross-sectional dependence.•Greek regional unemployment series are non-stationary with the presence of a structural break.

The purpose of the paper is to examine the nature of Greek regional unemployment. The paper contributes to the literature assessing the stochastic properties of Greek unemployment rate in the context of the Greek regions by relying on various univariate and panel unit root tests. In particular, recently developed and more powerful panel unit-root tests that control for structural breaks, heterogeneity and cross-sectional dependence in the panel are employed. The results show that in all cases, after taking into account the fact that regional unemployment rates in Greece are subject to a structural break, the null hypothesis of a unit root is not rejected, indicating that the Greek regional unemployment series are non-stationary with the presence of a structural break.