Unemployment and the economics of gradualist policy reform

This paper investigates the efficiency of adjustment to economic reform programs when the cost of adjustment arises from high unemployment that can be generated as contracting sectors shrink faster than expanding sectors grow. Under plausible assumptions on the adjustment process, the speed of adjustment to “shock therapy” reforms is shown to be excessively rapid, and the rate of unemployment to be excessively high during the transition to the new equilibrium. The authorities can improve the efficiency of the adjustment by removing the distortion gradually, rather than abruptly. Gradualism has beneficial income distributional, as well as efficiency properties, because it improves welfare of the unemployed, who are necessarily the least advantaged social group in this model.