This study examines the relationship between unemployment rates and oil price, oil price uncertainty, and interest rates. This relation is examined by testing for both cointegration and causality between the variables. By employing the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) method this study managed to examine the long-run cointegration between unemployment rates oil price, oil price uncertainty, and interest rates. A modification of the ARDL method is the error correction method which was used to find the short-run dynamics and the speed of convergence back to equilibrium after a shock. Fully modified ordinary least squares (FMOLS) regression was then applied to find the optimal estimates of the long-run coefficients for the regressions. The Toda-Yamamoto Granger causality test is used to find the direction of causality between the variables. These tests were conducted on Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Finland on monthly data from January 2008 to February 2020. A cointegration relationship was found for Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. The long-run coefficients from the FMOLS regression showed that increased oil prices lead to increased unemployment rates for Sweden and Denmark. All countries except Denmark show evidence of causality from oil prices on unemployment indicating a strong relationship between these two variables. Some countries show causality from oil price uncertainty and interest rates on unemployment rates. These results provide important guidance for policymakers on how to design good economic policies.

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Yes / This study examines the effect of carbon price uncertainty on stock price crash risk. Utilizing the dynamic panel model on the data of Chinese listed firms from 2011 to 2018, we find that high carbon price uncertainty increases stock price crash risk. The impact of carbon price uncertainty is more prominent in the heavily polluting industries and during the post-period of the Paris agreement. The two underlying channels through which carbon price uncertainty induces stock price crashes are managers' hoarding of bad news and investors' heterogeneity. Furthermore, reducing information asymmetry inside and outside the firms can mitigate the influence of carbon price uncertainty on stock price crash risk. Our findings demonstrate that carbon price uncertainty as a newly underexplored factor induced by the prevailing curb of catastrophe risks has unintended but important implications on stock prices. / This study was supported by the Project of Social Science Achievement Evaluation Committee of Hunan Province (Grant No. XSP22YBZ160), Hunan Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 2022JJ40644 and No. 2022JJ40647). / The full-text of this article will be released for public view at the end of the publisher embargo on 24th Oct 2024.