Does volatility in natural resources commodity prices and economic performance matter for RCEP economies?

Recently, volatility in the prices of natural resources has become an international issue that needs researchers' attention. Thus, the current research investigates the impact of economic growth in the RCEP countries on the volatility of natural resource rents. The research paper has focused on eight countries of this region, including Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, China, and Japan, using data from 1981 to 2020 and employing the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) cointegration approach. The researcher has found that economic growth impacts both the natural resources and their volatility. This study found strong evidence for the positive and statistical relationship between these two variables in Cambodia, China, Japan, Singapore, and Thailand. However, the researcher did not find significant relationships in the context of Brunei, Laos, and Vietnam. This study provides implications for policymakers and practitioners to modify the policies for natural resource rents. Furthermore, countries with an insignificant impact of economic growth on natural resource rents should be scrutinized to understand the positive points in their policies.

Automated summary

Recently, the volatility in natural resource prices has gained international attention, leading to research on the impact of economic growth on the volatility of natural resource rents in the RCEP countries. This study focuses on eight countries in the region and finds a positive and statistically significant relationship between economic growth and natural resource rents in Cambodia, China, Japan, Singapore, and Thailand. However, this relationship is not significant in Brunei, Laos, and Vietnam. The study provides implications for policymakers to modify natural resource rent policies and to learn from countries with insignificant impacts on economic growth.