Growth And Oil Futures Prices In Developing Countries

Abstract

This paper examines cointegration and causality between oil prices and economic growth for the oil importing developing countries of Turkey, India, Pakistan, The Philippines and Korea. The study finds the absence of cointegrating relationship between oil prices and economic activity but the existence of unidirectional short-run causality running from oil prices to economic growths for The Philippines and Pakistan. Unidirectional causality is also found to exist from six and nine month futures prices to economic growth for India and Turkey in a bivariate vector autoregression framework. The study fails to establish causal relationship between oil prices and economic growth for Korea, while for India and Turkey, non-causality has been established between oil spot price and economic growth. Hence, our results may suggest that oil futures markets will have more of a role to play in the economy as these markets mature and or as oil prices continue to increase.