ارتباط میان قیمت نفت، نرخ بهره و نرخ بیکاری: شواهدی از بازار نوظهور

While the interrelation between oil price changes, economic activity and employment is an important issue that has been studied mainly for developed countries, little attention has been devoted to inquiries on fluctuations in the price of crude oil and its impact on employment for small open economies. Adopting an efficiency wage model for equilibrium employment that does not require any assumptions regarding labor supply, this paper contributes to the literature by investigating the causality between unemployment and two input prices, namely energy (crude oil) and capital (real interest rate) in an emerging market, Turkey for the period 2005:01–2009:08. Applying a relatively new technique, the Toda–Yamamoto procedure, we find that the real price of oil and interest rate improve the forecasts of unemployment in the long run. This finding supports the hypothesis that labor is a substitute factor of production for capital and energy.

Unemployment is an important macroeconomic and political problem all economies confront. Due to its social and economic consequences, it is essential for policy makers to identify the factors that are affecting the unemployment rate the most. Furthermore, policy makers must also realize that the dynamics of unemployment and other factors may differ among countries at different stages of economic development. Developing countries are known to have higher unemployment rates than developed countries, with the former having higher economic growth rates than the latter. High level of unemployment has been also observed in Turkey, playing a major role in both the government's internal and international economic policies. Considering unemployment in a supply–demand framework, it can be argued that the level of employment depends on factors such as the productivity of labor, wages, price level, and prices of other factors of production. On a macroeconomic level, unemployment rate will also follow closely the local factors such as the state of the economy, business cycles, the technology level, and population demographics, as well as global factors like energy prices. Policy makers need a clear understanding of the dynamics and microeconomic fundamentals through which factors influence the unemployment rate in the long run, in order to devise sound macroeconomic programs. In this paper we follow an efficiency wage framework that enables us to theoretically relate real oil price, real interest rate, and unemployment. Applying the Toda–Yamamoto procedure which avoids some of the problems other techniques face, we find that real input prices positively Granger cause unemployment in Turkey. This result is inline with the theory and the results of other studies that mostly focus on developed countries.

This paper investigates the relationship between oil prices, unemployment and interest rate in Turkey based on an efficiency wage model of Carruth et al. (1998). A considerable body of economic literature indicates the adverse economic impact of oil price shocks for the developed economies. But, there are not enough empirical studies on Turkey and other developing countries. By employing the TY procedure, we were able to support the evidence that input prices, including oil price, affect the unemployment in Turkey. Our results suggest that in the long run both the real price of oil and the real interest rate have an effect on the unemployment rate in Turkey, confirming Carruth, et al. (1998) results for the U.S. The Andreopoulos (2009) results for U.S. during recessions are also similar. Our results also suggest that labor is a substitute factor of production for capital and energy in Turkey. We understand that oil shocks operate mainly through conventional aggregate channels, transmitting oil price increases to the labor market in Turkey, as Hamilton (1988) suggested. This study brings forth a question of whether the theory also holds for other developing countries.