A developing country like Pakistan is heavily dependent on the oil as inputs for almost every industrial sector therefore increase in oil prices, increases inputs cost, consequently increasing production costs and unemployment rate. Existing literature has mostly focused on the relationship between unemployment and oil prices of developed countries, the current study used the data from developing country Pakistan to investigate the relationship between oil prices and unemployment. The current study used monthly data from the period 1991:01–2010:12, making 238 observations of each variable for analysis and employed Toda Yamamoto causality test. The results of current study suggested the significant effect of oil prices on unemployment but found no significant association between real interest rate and unemployment, thus findings of current study are partially consistent with the efficiency wage model. Furthermore, results suggest that real oil prices cause significant changes in the real interest rate in Pakistan. It can be concluded from the results that oil prices can be used in long run to improve the forecasting of unemployment and real interest rate.

Keywords:Oil prices, Interest rate, Unemployment, Efficiency Wage Model, Toda-Yamamoto