Essays on Fiscal Policy and Oil Price Shocks
Essays on Fiscal Policy and Oil Price Shocks

Author: Yifei Lyu

Publisher:

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 97

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In my dissertation, I use cutting-edge time series econometric models to explore how the effects of government spending shocks change with the state of the economy, how to identify the effects of oil price changes induced by different reasons, and why oil price shocks seem to be much less important nowadays than decades ago. Chapter 1 builds a Markov-switching structural VAR to estimate state-dependent government spending multipliers in the U.S. We show that the multipliers are statistically larger during recessions than during expansions, although smaller than 1 in both periods. Our model has two features. First, we combine quantitative data and qualitative indicators to infer the regimes of the economy across which the multipliers differ. Second, we propose a recursive method to estimate impulse response functions that allows the economy to switch regimes after the shock. We argue that these two features are important for reconciling the main findings in previous studies. Chapter 2 estimates a standard structural VAR of the global oil market using both external and internal instrumental variables. I find that a negative oil supply shock leads to a delayed but significant decline in economic activity. Whereas oil consumption demand shocks do not have a significant effect on economic activity, a positive shock to oil inventory demand results in significant declines in oil production and economic activity at the same time. Furthermore, I show that oil price movements are mostly driven by shocks to oil consumption demand. Chapter 3 revisits the evidence in Blanchard and Gali (2010) that the effects of oil price shocks have diminished since the mid-1980s. I show that the apparent instability in the oil price-macroeconomy relationship they find can be accounted for by the endogeneity of oil price changes and the lower energy share in consumption in recent decades. When these two factors are taken into account, the effects of oil price shocks on real economic activity appear to be stable over time. Nevertheless, the impact of oil prices on inflation has noticeably weakened over time.

Essays on the Effects of Oil Price Shocks on Exchange Rates and the Economy of Saudi Arabia
Essays on the Effects of Oil Price Shocks on Exchange Rates and the Economy of Saudi Arabia

Author: Moayad Hussain Al Rasasi

Publisher:

Published: 2016

Total Pages:

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This dissertation consists of three essays examining the consequences of oil price shocks on exchange rates and the economy of Saudi Arabia. In the first essay, we examine the impact of oil prices on the US dollar (USD) exchange rate in the flexible monetary model framework. We find evidence, based on the impulse response function analysis from the VEC model, suggesting the negative association between oil prices and the USD against 12 currencies. Furthermore, the results from out-of-sample forecasts indicate that oil prices play an essential role in improving the forecasting power of the monetary model of exchange rate determination. In the second essay, we analyze how G7 real exchange rates and monetary policy respond to oil supply, aggregate demand, and oil-specific demand shocks initiated by Killian (2009). Our evidence confirms that aggregate demand and oil specific demand shocks are associated with the depreciation of the real exchange rate for five countries whereas oil supply shocks lead to the depreciation of real exchange rate in four countries. Likewise, we find the monetary policy responds significantly only to aggregate demand and oil specific demand shocks in three countries while the monetary policy responds to real exchange rate shocks in four countries. In the third essay, we investigate the differential effects of oil shocks, developed by Killian (2009), on industrial production, inflation, and the nominal exchange rate of Saudi Arabia. The reported evidence shows that industrial production responds positively only to oil supply shocks. Likewise, we find evidence indicating that there is a positive impact of aggregate demand shocks on inflation. On the other hand, we find evidence suggesting that oil supply and demand shocks are associated with the nominal exchange rate depreciation.

Essays On The Macroeconomic Effects Of Oil Price Shocks On The U.S. Economy
Essays On The Macroeconomic Effects Of Oil Price Shocks On The U.S. Economy

Author: Romita Mukherjee

Publisher:

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 464

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A large volume of research has acknowledged the role of oil price shocks to generate a significant stagflationary impact on U.S. and other oil importing nations. Recent research however shows a paradigm shift in this oil price-macroeconomy relationship since the mid 1980s, during which the U.S. economy has been relatively resilient to oil shocks. Both output contraction and inflationary expectations have been milder in the post mid 1980s than before. But the 2007-08 oil shock episode has re-emphasized the immense impact of the ebbs and flows of oil prices on the U.S. economys ups and downs. Global oil price peaked at $148 a barrel in June 2008. With the mortgage crisis and credit crunch, oil was another blow too many. The U.S. economy swamped into one of the greatest recessions of all times. According to Hamilton (2009), the 2007-08 oil shock had a significant contribution to the recent recession. While a lot of work have been done on the effects of oil price shocks on the U.S. economy, relatively little work has investigated what triggers oil price increase. My research illustrates why it is important to study the cause of an oil price rise. First, the effects of oil price rise on the macro variables depend heavily on what causes the shock. Secondly, whereas the oil price hikes of the 1970s and early 1980s can mostly be attributed to exogenous events in OPEC (Arab Oil Embargo, Iran-Iraq War, Iranian Revolution), a significant source of oil price spikes in the post mid 1980 era have been an increase in global oil demand confronting stagnating oil production. From a policy perspective, of course, policies aimed at dealing with higher oil prices must take careful account of what causes oil prices to rise. Empirical research that demonstrates the resilience of U.S. economy to oil price shocks builds on the implicit assumption that as oil price varies, everything else in the global economy is held constant. Thus all variations in oil prices are taken as alike and exogenous. This overlooks the possibility that oil price rise sparked off by diverse events can potentially lead to different repercussions. This thesis is an attempt to develop framework to study the endogenous increase in oil price. The oil price increase arises from increase in U.S. growth rate, increase in foreign growth rate and a purely exogenous oil supply shock by OPEC. The most important result is that the source of oil price rise has changed after the mid 1980s - whereas before the mid 1980s, bulk of the variation in oil price was due to supply shocks by OPEC, post mid 1980s, most of the variation in oil price is explained by increase in U.S. and foreign growth. Furthermore, if the origin of the oil price rise is the same, then the responses of most U.S. macroeconomic variables display remarkable similarity in the pre and post mid 1980s. This result gives us a new way to look at the resilience of the U.S. economic activity to oil price rise since the mid 1980s. The resilience can be explained to a significant extent by the fact that the type of shocks resulting in oil price rise has changed.

On the Sources and Consequences of Oil Price Shocks
On the Sources and Consequences of Oil Price Shocks

Author: Deren Unalmis

Publisher: International Monetary Fund

Published: 2012-11-08

Total Pages: 41

ISBN-13: 1475586361

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Building on recent work on the role of speculation and inventories in oil markets, we embed a competitive oil storage model within a DSGE model of the U.S. economy. This enables us to formally analyze the impact of a (speculative) storage demand shock and to assess how the effects of various demand and supply shocks change in the presence of oil storage facility. We find that business-cycle driven oil demand shocks are the most important drivers of U.S. oil price fluctuations during 1982-2007. Disregarding the storage facility in the model causes a considerable upward bias in the estimated role of oil supply shocks in driving oil price fluctuations. Our results also confirm that a change in the composition of shocks helps explain the resilience of the macroeconomic environment to the oil price surge after 2003. Finally, speculative storage is shown to have a mitigating or amplifying role depending on the nature of the shock.

Essays on the Macroeconomic Effects of Energy Price Shocks
Essays on the Macroeconomic Effects of Energy Price Shocks

Author: Mark Alan Melichar

Publisher:

Published: 2013

Total Pages:

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In the first chapter I study the effects of oil price shocks on economic activity at the U.S. state-level, an innovative feature of this dissertation. States which rely more heavily on manufacturing or tourism are more adversely affected by adverse oil price shocks, while states which are major energy producers either benefit or experience insignificant economic changes from historically large oil price increases. Additionally, oil price increases from 1986 to 2011 have not impacted state-level economies to the same degree as increases from 1976 to 1985. This discrepancy can be attributed to a fundamental change in the structure of the U.S. economy, for example, a declining manufacturing sector or an increase in the efficiency with which energy is used in the production process. In the second chapter I explore the effects of alternative measures of energy price shocks on economic activity and examine the relative performance of these alternative measures in forecasting macroeconomic activity. The alternative energy prices I consider are: gasoline, diesel, natural gas, heating oil and electricity. I find that alternative measures of energy price shocks produce different patterns of impulse responses than oil price shocks. The overwhelming evidence indicates that alternative energy price models, excluding a model containing gasoline prices, outperforms the baseline model containing oil prices for many states, particularly at short-to-mid forecast horizons. In the third chapter, which is coauthored with Lance Bachmeier, we determine whether accounting for oil price endogeneity is important when predicting state-level economic activity. We find that accounting for endogeneity matters for in-sample fit for most states. Specifically, in-sample fit would be improved by using a larger model which contains both regular oil price and endogenous oil price movements. However, we conclude that accounting for endogeneity is not important for out-of-sample forecast accuracy, and a simple model containing only the change in the price of oil produces equally accurate forecasts. Accounting for endogeneity is particularly important in an environment in which rising oil prices were caused by a growing global economy, such as in the years 2004-2007.

Essays on Monetary Policy in an Oil Exporting Economy
Essays on Monetary Policy in an Oil Exporting Economy

Author: Mohamed Tahar Benkhodja

Publisher:

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The aim of this thesis is to analyze the impact of external shocks on oil exporting economies and the role of monetary policy in this context. It consists of three essays. In the first essay, we build a Multi-sector Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) model to investigate the impact of both windfall (an increase in oil price) and boom (an increase in oil resource) on an oil exporting economy. Our model is built to see if the two oil shocks (windfall and boom) generate, in the same proportion, a Dutch Disease effect. Our main findings show that the Dutch disease effect under its two main mechanisms, namely spending effect and resource-movement effect, occurs only in the case of flexible wages and sticky prices, when exchange rate is fixed. We also compare the source of fluctuations that leads to a strong effect in term of de-industrialization. We conclude that the windfall leads to a stronger effect than a boom. Finally, the choice of flexible exchange rate regime helps to improve welfare.In the second essay, we estimate, by using the Bayesian approach, a DSGE model for Algerian economy investigating the dynamic effect of four external shocks (oil price, real exchange rate, international interest rate and foreign inflation), and examining the appropriate monetary policy rule. Our main findings show that, over the period 1990Q1-2010Q4, core inflation target is the best monetary rule to stabilize both output and inflation. In the third essay, we investigate the impact of the recent increase of oil price on a small open oil exporting economy. For this, we estimate a Dynamic, Stochastic, General equilibrium (DSGE) model for some oil producing countries using the Bayesian approach. We consider, in this essay, a sample of 16 oil exporting countries (Algeria, Argentina, Ecuador, Gabon, Indonesia, Kuwait, Libya, Malaysia, Mexico, Nigeria, Oman, Russia, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Venezuela) over the period from 1980 to 2010, except for Russia where our sample begins in 1992. In order to distinguish between high-dependent and low-dependent countries, we use two indicators : the ratio of fuel exports to total merchandise exports and the ratio of oil exports to GDP. We estimate the median for each ratio on our 16 studied countries. Countries above (below) the median are considered as high (low) oil dependent economies. We verify if the first group is more sensitive to the Dutch disease effect. We also assess the role of monetary policy. Our main findings show that in the first sample, namely high oil dependant economies, 6 countries are affected by the Dutch disease (decrease in the manufacturing production). Low oil dependant countries, are less affected by the fluctuation of oil price. Indeed, only one country has suffered a Dutch disease effect after the shock. Nevertheless, Regarding the appropriate monetary policy rule, we find that both inflation targeting and exchange rate rules may be effective to contain the size of the Dutch disease effect. Our results suggest that in Algeria and Saudi Arabia, inflation targeting offers better performances. We observe the opposite in Gabon, Kuwait, Oman, and Venezuela. Such results are consistent with economic theory. Indeed, we see that in more open economies and smaller countries (in terms of economic size), the exchange rate rule is preferable to inflation rule. Venezuela seems an exception. Such country does not fulfill the traditional criteria favoring the choice of the exchange rule. In fact, this exception is only apparent. First, if we consider the volatility, we see that Venezuela is among the most volatile economy. Second, Venezuela suffers from a fiscal dominance effect: both inflation rate and fiscal deficit are the highest relative to other studied countries.