Author: Mohamed Tahar Benkhodja

Publisher:

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13:

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.