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

This paper uses four ADF-type unit root tests and four KPSS-type 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 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 and KPSS-type tests offers consistent results that show the convergence of the gender unemployment gap in the line of the “Law of one unemployment rate”. The findings in the paper have significant policy implications.