Temporal Effects of Economic Policy Uncertainty on Natural Resource-Intensive Product Exports

This study examines the impact of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) in importing countries on exports of natural resource-intensive products (NRIP). It contributes to the literature by explicitly incorporating a temporal perspective into the EPU-trade nexus, distinguishing between short-run and long-run effects, and by conceptualizing free trade agreements (FTAs) as institutional mechanisms that mitigate policy uncertainty. Using an extended gravity framework and a panel ARDL approach with bilateral data for 170 countries from 2000 to 2022, the analysis tests for cointegration among EPU, FTAs, and NRIP exports, while controlling for multilateral resistance through fixed effects. The results show that importer-side EPU significantly reduces NRIP exports in the long run, whereas short-run effects are negligible. FTAs do not generate immediate export gains but exert positive long-run effects and substantially attenuate the adverse impact of EPU. These findings highlight the importance of institutional arrangements in shaping trade resilience and provide new evidence on the dynamic and conditional nature of policy uncertainty effects in resource-intensive sectors.