Natural Resource Rents and Unemployment in Oil Exporting Countries

Abstract

The main objective of this study is to examine short-run and long-run relationship between natural resource rents and unemployment in OPEC and OAPEC countries over the period from 1991 to 2016, using PMG-ARDL model. The causality test shows that causality runs from total natural resources rents to unemployment. The study finds that, on the long-run, the impact of natural resource rents on unemployment rate is a positive significant impact, whether using aggregated data for natural resource rents or disaggregated (oil and natural gas). Almost all the variables have no significant impact on unemployment on the short-run.