Current accounts and oil price fluctuations in oil-exporting countries: The role of financial development

Oil-exporting countries usually experience large current account improvements following a sharp increase in oil prices. In this paper, we investigate this oil price-current account relationship on a sample of 27 oil-exporting economies. Relying upon the estimation of panel smooth transition regression models over the 1980–2010 period, we provide evidence that refines the traditional interpretation of oil price effects on current accounts. While current accounts are positively affected by oil price variations, this effect is nonlinear and depends critically on the degree of financial development of oil-exporting economies. More specifically, oil price variations exert a stronger impact on the current account position for less financially developed countries, this influence diminishing with financial deepness.     

The dynamic moderating function of the exchange rate market on the oil-stock nexus

Oil price movements have an important impact on the stock market, and this impact could be dynamically moderated by the exchange rate, which could not be effectively depicted by VAR or GARCH methods widely used in previous studies. This paper adopts a more flexible nonlinear model to investigates this dynamic moderating effect of the exchange rate market on the oil-stock nexus for 45 major countries from November 30, 2005 to November 22, 2019. We also compare the differences in this moderating effect between oil-importing and oil-exporting countries and confirm the presence of a wealth transfer effect. Specifically, the empirical results show that (1) In the stage where domestic currency depreciation or appreciation degree is not serious (the growth rate is less than 0.1), an increase in crude oil prices has a positive impact on stock market returns, and this positive impact is weakened when the growth rate of the exchange rate return approaches zero. (2) As the local currency continues to appreciate (the growth rate is greater than about 0.22), the increase in crude oil prices may negatively influence stock market returns to an increasingly greater extent among crude oil importers. (3) The increase in crude oil prices may have a short-term positive impact on stock market returns in oil-exporting countries due to the wealth transfer effect when the domestic currency appreciates at a faster rate. Finally, we discuss the policy implications of our findings to help investors avoid risks due to fluctuations in international oil prices.     

Financial and monetary policy responses to oil price shocks: evidence from oil-importing and oil-exporting countries

In this study, we investigate the financial and monetary policy responses to oil price shocks using a Structural VAR framework. We distinguish between net oil-importing and net oil-exporting countries. Since the 80s, a significant number of empirical studies have been published investigating the effect of oil prices on macroeconomic and financial variables. Most of these studies though, do not make a distinction between oil-importing and oil-exporting economies. Overall, our results indicate that the level of inflation in both net oil-exporting and net oil-importing countries is significantly affected by oil price innovations. Furthermore, we find that the response of interest rates to an oil price shock depends heavily on the monetary policy regime of each country. Finally, stock markets operating in net oil-importing countries exhibit a negative response to increased oil prices. The reverse is true for the stock market of the net oil-exporting countries. We find evidence that the magnitude of stock market responses to oil price shocks is higher for the newly established and/or less liquid stock markets.     

The non-linear relationship between oil prices and stock prices: Evidence from oil-importing and oil-exporting countries

This paper investigates the long-run dynamics between stock and oil prices over the period from March 13, 2001 to August 25, 2017 using the Rafailidis and Katrakilidis (2014) approach, which includes the structural breaks in the relationship between the variables in a Dynamic Ordinary Least Squares model. The approach verifies the existence of cointegration and asymmetry. The main results indicate that when using nonlinear approaches, we can find cointegration and asymmetry. For oil-exporting countries, a positive long-term relationship was found between oil and stock prices. In this case, the wealth effect prevailed for these countries. For oil-importing countries with developed economies, a negative signal was found, confirming that in these economies the business cost channel prevailed. However, oil-importing countries with emerging economies have experienced a positive sign in the long-term relationship, probably due to the economic cycle. In addition, only the United States has seen asymmetric adjustments in the long-term relationship between oil and stock prices.     

Crude oil shocks and African stock markets

In this paper, we investigate the impact of crude oil shocks on selected African stock markets using a Structural Vector Autoregressive model and a two-state regime smooth transition regression framework on monthly data from January 2000 to July 2018. The study is timely given the fast-growing energy sector and stock markets in Africa as well as the place of Africa in international trade. Selected markets are classified into oil-exporting (Nigeria, Tunisia, and Egypt) and oil-importing (Botswana, South Africa, Kenya, and Mauritius). The key findings are as follows: global demand shock does not really matter in oil-importing countries; there is little evidence that oil supply shock affects the real stock return for oil-exporting and oil-importing countries; oil-specific shock is significant for most countries investigated; negative price shocks have more impact than positive price shocks. The findings from this study have important implications for investors whose portfolios may comprise of assets from African stock markets and crude oil. Given the importance of oil in the global market, one would typically avoid equities that suffer from its shock. This study provides the indicators to inform that decision.     

Time-varying correlation between oil and stock market volatilities: Evidence from oil-importing and oil-exporting countries

This paper investigates the time-varying conditional correlation between oil price and stock market volatility for six major oil-importing and oil-exporting countries. The period of the study runs from January 2000 until December 2014 and a Diag-BEKK model is employed. Our findings report the following regularities. (i) The correlation between the oil and stock market volatilities changes over time fluctuating at both positive and negative values. (ii). Heterogeneous patterns in the time-varying correlations are evident between the oil-importing and oil-exporting countries. (iii) Correlations are responsive to major economic and geopolitical events, such as the early-2000 recession, the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the global financial crisis of 2007–2009. These findings are important for risk management practices, derivative pricing and portfolio rebalancing.     

石油美元面临的挑战与对策研究

石油美元,最初作为上世纪70年代中期石油输出国,由于石油价格大幅提高后增加的石油收入,在扣除用于发展本国经济和国内其他支出后的盈余资金而被人们熟悉,但其真正引起人们关注的是石油货币霸权的斗争。本文探讨了石油货币霸权的争夺以及石油美元循环的不可持续的宏观经济现状,通过对石油美元目前面临的挑战研究提出有益的应对策略。     

Modelling the nonlinear relationship between oil prices,stock markets,and exchange rates in oil-exporting and oil-importing countries

This article investigates the multivariate dependence between oil prices, equity markets, and exchange rates in certain oil-importing and oil-exporting countries by applying the vine copulas approach which offers a greater flexibility and permits the modelling of complex dependency patterns for high-dimensional distributions. Our results show that the dependence between oil and exchange rates is significantly negative during different periods of analysis, except for the British Pound and Japanese Yen exchange rates. This result indicates that oil may serve as a weak hedge against exchanges rates.     

Regime-Dependent Effect of Crude Oil Price on BRICS Stock Markets

In this study, the dynamic relation between global crude oil prices and stock prices is investigated in terms of crude oil-exporting and -importing countries. The relationship between crude oil prices and stock prices is examined for BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) for the periods of January 1995 to December 2016 by means of the Markov Switching Vector Autoregression (MS-VAR) model. The impulse-response analysis results suggest that the responses of the stock market to an oil price shock vary over the regimes for all countries. Specifically, we find that the responses of the stock market to an unexpected oil price shock are positive and statistically significant in the high-volatility regime in all countries except for China, and these results suggest that the increase in oil prices may be evaluated by demand-side shock in these countries.     

Current account balance and dollar standard: Exploring the linkages

This paper examines whether the international role of the dollar as main global reserve currency has contributed to persistent current account imbalances. To this end, we analyse how central banks' accumulation of reserve assets affects the current account balance of both reserve-accumulating and reserve-providing countries.Based on a simple portfolio balance model we show theoretically that the global demand for reserve assets by central banks may lower the current account balance of the reserve-issuing country. Our panel data analysis over the period 1970–2009 confirms this hypothesis: Any dollar of provided reserve assets decreases the US current account by more than one dollar. On average, the demand for dollar reserves has lowered the US current account by 1–2 percentage points relative to GDP. The flip side of this effect is a higher current account balance in reserve-accumulating countries. These novel findings show that the worldwide demand for international reserves has contributed to the buildup of global imbalances.     

Oil price uncertainty and corporate cash holdings: Global evidence

This study investigates the effects of oil price uncertainty on corporate cash holdings using large international publicly listed firms from 89 countries for the period 1990–2017. Building on the precautionary motive of cash and the trade-off theory, we argue that the oil price uncertainty has a significant impact on corporate cash holdings and this impact is nonlinear. First, we find that oil price volatility is positively associated with corporate cash holdings. However, we then find evidence that shows that the association between oil volatility and cash holdings exhibits a U-shape. Finally, we present evidence that the positive relationship between oil price uncertainty and corporate cash holdings is more pronounced in firms operating in oil-exporting countries and in oil-exposed industries. Overall, our findings support our predictions and are robust to multiple robustness tests.     

Does oil price have similar effects on the exchange rates of BRICS?

Motivated by the crucial status of oil price and exchange rates in world finance and economy, we apply daily data from August 2005 to February 2019 to investigate the impact of oil price shocks on the exchange rate of BRICS countries. This paper first adopts a new framework and EEMD method to decompose oil shocks and exchange rate series, respectively. With these econometric methods, the final research variables in this paper are constructed, including two types of oil shocks and three kinds of exchange rate series. The ARDL approach and VAR model are then employed to detect the influence of oil shocks on exchange rates in different frequencies, corresponding to the stationarity of series. The evidence, based on the original exchange rate series reveals that two oil price shocks can produce different effects on net oil-importing countries and net oil-exporting countries, while the results from different frequencies show that exchange rates will have a significant response to oil shocks only at a high frequency. It is worth noting that China is a unique case in BRICS, the relations between its exchange rate and oil price shocks is far insignificant than that of the other countries.     

Asymmetric volatility spillover between oil-importing and oil-exporting countries' economic policy uncertainty and China's energy sector

While the relationship between economic policy uncertainty(EPU) and energy market is of great interest to economist, previous research dose not differentiate the effect from oil-importing countries to oil-exporting countries' EPU on the a country's energy sector. In this paper, we address this issue by testing the effect of importer and exporter's EPU on the largest oil-importing country, China, as oil-importing affected greatly by the economic policy. TVP-FAVAR model is applied to obtain the factors and time-varying coefficients of 21 countries' EPU monthly indexes and energy stock realized volatility. We find that the Chinese energy sector's stock volatility is positively related to EPU shocks and that bad volatility has a stronger impact than good volatility. Second, the volatility spillover from oil-exporting countries' EPU on the Chinese energy sector is stronger than that from oil-importing countries' EPU, with a stronger effect for bad volatility than for good volatility. Finally, The bad volatility spillover and spillover asymmetry is stronger during the crisis periods, such as the debt crisis, energy contention, oil price turbulence, or limited production agreement, both symmetric and asymmetric spillovers increase. Our findings have potentially important implications for the regulators and investors on Chinese oil market with different types of countries' EPU.     

Oil price shocks and exchange rate movements

This study investigates the effects of oil price shocks on exchange rate movements in five major oil-exporting countries: Russia, Brazil, Mexico, Canada, and Norway. The R² of the fundamental model doubles in Russia and Brazil, but increases slightly in Canada and Norway when oil prices are added to it. The volatility of exchange rates associated with oil price shocks is significant in Russia, Brazil, and Mexico, but weak in Norway and Canada. It takes much longer for the exchange rate to reach the initial equilibrium level in Russia, Brazil, and Mexico than in Norway and Canada. The asymmetric behavior of exchange rate volatility among countries seems to be related to the efficiency of financial markets rather than to the importance of oil revenues in the economy.     

Cointegration test of oil price and us dollar exchange rates for some oil dependent economies

This study examines the long-run dynamics between oil price and the bilateral US dollar exchange rates for a group of oil-dependent economies before and after the 2008–2009 Global Financial Crises. Exchange rates are for the euro, Indian rupee, Russian ruble, South African rand, Ghanaian cedi and the Nigerian naira. The dependence on crude oil of these economies is either because fiscal revenues are primarily reliant on oil export receipts or because industrial production is heavily dependent on petroleum. Empirical results show evidence of a long run equilibrium relationship between oil price and exchange rate, especially for currencies of the key oil-exporting countries. This relationship is more evident in the post crisis period, which is also the period when both exchange rate volatility and the inverse relationship between oil price and exchange rate experienced a significant increase.     

人口年龄结构、储蓄率与经常项目差额——基于亚洲13个国家面板数据的实证检验

从人口年龄结构角度解释经常项目差额是一个中长期的结构性研究视角。东亚国家的典型事实分析表明,人口年龄结构很可能是可贸易品在国家间转移的重要决定因素。面板数据实证检验发现:在开放经济条件下,经常项目差额受到国内储蓄、投资等经济变量的显著性影响,经常项目差额与国内投资率存在此消彼长的关系;少儿人口比重和老年人口比重与经常项目差额存在反向关系。可以推断,中国在人口总抚养比较低的"人口红利"期贸易顺差换得的外汇储备具备了应对未来老龄化社会的战略价值。     

Asymmetric credit growth and current account imbalances in the euro area

The euro-area crisis is often linked to the emergence of current account imbalances. As most of the deficit countries experienced pronounced credit booms at the same time that these imbalances were building up, this paper investigates the link between domestic credit developments and the current account balance. Using a panel error correction specification, the estimation results show that flows of bank loans to the non-financial private sector are a significant determinant of the current account and that they – together with changes in competitiveness – constituted the most important factor driving the build-up of current account imbalances in the deficit countries. Accordingly, impeding an increase in private sector indebtedness seems to be a promising way to dampen the formation of unsustainable current account imbalances.     

Wealth happens

The economic world is full of patterns, and one of the most controversial is the distribution of wealth. You might expect the balance between rich and poor to vary widely from country to country. But back in 1897, Vilfredo Pareto discovered a pattern of wealth distribution that appears to be universal. Whenever you double the amount of wealth within a country, the number of people in each successively higher wealth bracket falls by a constant factor. The factor varies among countries, but the pattern remains essentially the same. From a mathematical standpoint, Pareto's distribution has stubbornly defied explanation. But recently, researchers were able to replicate the curve by applying the principles of network organization. They began with two simple assumptions. First, wealth accumulates either by transfers from person to person or through investment returns, positive or negative. Second, rich people invest more money than poor people. Starting with a hypothetical group of 1,000 people of equal wealth and abilities, the model always produces Pareto's wealth distribution no matter how the links in the network are organized or how the balance between interpersonal transactions and investment returns are set. The model also indicates that the degree of wealth concentration can be influenced. Increasing the number of links in the network or the total amount of money flowing through an economy tends to decrease wealth disparities; increasing investment returns or volatility tends to increase it. Replete with public policy implications, the model is only one example of how network analysis can reshape our understanding of complex economic and social systems, which may have less to do with the behavior of individual members than with impersonal and seemingly insignificant forces.     

全球经常项目失衡影响因素的实证研究

近年来,全球经常项目失衡问题成为经济研究者、国际机构和各国中央银行经济学家以及商务经济研究报告竞相研究的热点问题。本文利用全球范围内56个国家或地区1980年至2005年的数据,针对影响经常项目的多种因素进行实证研究,结果表明经常项目与政府财政收支、资本形成率以及开放程度等因素密切相关。在当前全球经济增速放缓的形势下,只有通过有效的国际经济政策协调才能促进全球经常项目失衡问题的有序解决。     

Off-balance sheet exposures and banking crises in OECD countries

Against the background of the acknowledged importance of off-balance-sheet exposures in the sub prime crisis, we seek to investigate whether this was a new phenomenon or common to earlier crises. Using a logit approach to predicting banking crises in 14 OECD countries we find a significant impact of a proxy for the ratio of banks’ off-balance-sheet activity to total (off and on balance sheet) activity, as well as capital and liquidity ratios, the current account balance and GDP growth. These results are robust to the exclusion of the most crisis prone countries in our model. For early warning purposes we show that real house price growth is a good proxy for off balance sheet activity prior to the sub-prime episode. Variables capturing off-balance sheet activity have been neglected in most early warning models to date. We consider it essential that regulators take into account the results for crisis prediction in regulating banks and their off-balance sheet exposures, and thus controlling their contribution to systemic risk.