Oil Price Shocks and Macroeconomic Fluctuations: A GVAR Approach

Abstract

We investigate the effects of oil price shocks on industrial and emerging market economies. We use a global vector autoregressive (GVAR) model with 19 economies from 1999M1 to 2022M3. Our sample evaluates output responses of each country to the same global shock, defined in several ways. While we find that domestic prices and interest rates in industrial economies respond to the WTI real oil price shock, the generalized impulse response functions (GIRF) tend to be not statistically significant in emerging economies. Stock markets increase in the first months for the oil producers but have negative values in the long-run. The oil price shock causes a generalized fall in industrial production and loses importance over time. We reinforce our results by identifying the oil shock using the structural GIRF (SGIRF) following a causal ordering from oil to real output. When we decompose WTI into either supply or demand shocks, industrial production declines in the short-run due to supply shocks but increases in response to oil demand shocks. Our results are very robust, especially in industrial economies when allowing for time-varying bilateral trade. Underscoring the importance of identifying oil price shocks, the oil price shock pushes inflation up, prompting the central bank's response in policy rates.