Does oil price really matter for the wage arrears in Russia?

This paper employs bootstrap full- and sub-sample rolling-window Granger causality tests to explore the time-varying interaction between oil price and wage arrears in Russia. The empirical results reveal that the decline in oil price leads wage arrears to increase, which indicates that there is an oil curse in Russia, as high wage arrears caused by low oil price may hinder the healthy development. Also, the rise in oil price causes wage arrears to decrease, and then the economic and social progress in Russia can be promoted. These results are supported by the Dutch-disease endogenous growth model, which highlights that oil price negatively affects wage arrears. In turn, there is a negative influence from wage arrears to oil price, which points out that the macroeconomic situation in Russia plays an important role in reflecting the changes of oil system. In the situation of international oil market uncertainty and the high dependence on the resources in Russia, investors can benefit from the above conclusions to diversify the investment risks. Also, it can provide implications for enterprises and governments to prevent potential wage arrears and improve the public confidence, as well as turn the resource curse into bonanza. (C) 2020 Published by Elsevier Ltd.