Does Inflation Slow Long-Run Growth in India?

This paper examines the long-run relationship between consumer price index industrial workers (CPI-IW) inflation and GDP growth in India. We collect data on a sample of 14 Indian states over the period 1989-?2013, and use the cross-sectionally augmented distributed lag (CS-DL) approach of Chudik et al. (2013) as well as the standard panel ARDL method for estimation? to account for cross-state heterogeneity and dependence, dynamics and feedback effects. Our findings suggest that, on average, there is a negative long-run relationship between inflation and economic growth in India. We also find statistically-significant inflation-growth threshold effects in the case of states with persistently-elevated inflation rates of above 5.5 percent. This suggests the need for the Reserve Bank of India to balance the short-term growth-inflation trade-off, in light of the long-term negative effects on growth of persistently-high inflation

Global VAR (GVAR) Database, 1979Q2-2016Q4

This is the latest version of the Global VAR (GVAR) dataset. The GVAR is a global modelling framework for analyzing the international macroeconomic transmission of shocks, taking into account drivers of economic activity, interlinkages and spillovers between different countries, and the effects of unobserved or observed common factors. This dataset includes quarterly macroeconomic variables for 33 economies (log real GDP, y, the rate of inflation, dp, short-term interest rate, r, long-term interest rate, lr, the log deflated exchange rate, ep, and log real equity prices, eq), as well as quarterly data on commodity prices (oil prices, poil, agricultural raw material, pmat, and metals prices, pmetal), over the 1979Q2 to 2016Q4 period. These 33 countries cover more than 90% of world GDP. You can download the data, as well as a description of the compilation, revision and updating of the GVAR Database, from here: http://www.econ.cam.ac.uk/people-files/faculty/km418/research.html#gvar It would be appreciated if use of the updated dataset could be acknowledged as: “Mohaddes, K. and M. Raissi (2018). Compilation, Revision and Updating of the Global VAR (GVAR) Database, 1979Q2-2016Q4. University of Cambridge: Faculty of Economics (mimeo)”

The Adaptive Investment Effect: Evidence from Chinese Provinces

This paper investigates the so-called “adaptive investment effect", a redirection of investment in productive capital towards adaptive capital with a view to mitigating the negative effects of climate change. We estimate the costs associated with the adaptive investment effect using data on Chinese provinces and find that the impact of investment on economic growth is reduced by between 27% and 37% in provinces investing more in adaptive capital. This implies that the social cost of carbon is higher than existing studies suggest, making it more urgent for policymakers to take action against climate change

One Hundred Years of Oil Income and the Iranian Economy: A curse or a Blessing

This paper examines the impact of oil revenues on the Iranian economy over the past hundred years, spanning the period 1908-2010. It is shown that although oil has been produced in Iran over a very long period, its importance in the Iranian economy was relatively small up until the early 1960s. It is argued that oil income has been both a blessing and a curse. Oil revenues when managed appropriately are a blessing, but their volatility (which in Iran is much higher than oil price volatility) can have adverse effects on real output, through excessively high and persistent levels of inflation. Lack of appropriate institutions and policy mechanisms which act as shock absorbers in the face of high levels of oil revenue volatility have also become a drag on real output. In order to promote growth, policies should be devised to control inflation; to serve as shock absorbers negating the adverse effects of oil revenue volatility; to reduce rent seeking activities; and to prevent excessive dependence of government finances on oil income

Institutions and the Volatility Curse

This paper revisits the resource curse paradox and studies the impact of resource rents and their volatility on economic growth under varying institutional quality. Using five-year non-overlapping observations between 1970 and 2005 for 112 countries, we find that while resource rents enhance real output per capita, their volatility exerts a negative impact on economic growth. Therefore, we argue that volatility, rather than abundance per se, drives the resource curse. However, we also find that higher institutional quality can help offset some of the negative volatility effects of resource rents. Therefore, resource abundance can be a blessing provided that growth and welfare enhancing policies and institutions are adopted

Oil Prices, External Income, and Growth: Lessons from Jordan

This paper extends the long-run growth model of Esfahani et al. (2009) to a labour exporting country that receives large inflows of external income - the sum of remittances, FDI and general government transfers - from major oil exporting economies. The theoretical model predicts real oil prices to be one of the main long-run drivers of real output. Using quarterly data between 1979 and 2009 on core macroeconomic variables for Jordan and a number of key foreign variables, we identify two long-run relationships: an output equation as predicted by theory and an equation linking foreign and domestic inflation rates. It is shown that real output in the long run is shaped by (i) oil prices through their impact on external income and in turn on capital accumulation, and (ii) technological transfers through foreign output. The empirical analysis of the paper confirms the hypothesis that a large share of Jordan's output volatility can be associated with fluctuations in net income received from abroad. External factors, however, cannot be relied upon to provide similar growth stimuli in the future, and therefore it will be important to diversify the sources of growth in order to achieve a high and sustained level of income.oil price shock

The U.S. Oil Supply Revolution and the Global Economy

This paper investigates the global macroeconomic consequences of falling oil prices due to the oil revolution in the United States, using a Global VAR model estimated for 38 countries/regions over the period 1979Q2 to 2011Q2. Set-identification of the U.S. oil supply shock is achieved through imposing dynamic sign restrictions on the impulse responses of the model. The results show that there are considerable heterogeneities in the responses of different countries to a U.S. supply-driven oil price shock, with real GDP increasing in both advanced and emerging market oil-importing economies, output declining in commodity exporters, inflation falling in most countries, and equity prices rising worldwide. Overall, our results suggest that following the U.S. oil revolution, with oil prices falling by 51 percent in the first year, global growth increases by 0.16 to 0.37 percentage points. This is mainly due to an increase in spending by oil importing countries, which exceeds the decline in expenditure by oil exporters

Country-specific oil supply shocks and the global economy: a counterfactual analysis

© 2016 Elsevier B.V. This paper investigates the global macroeconomic consequences of country-specific oil-supply shocks. Our contribution is both theoretical and empirical. On the theoretical side, we develop a model for the global oil market and integrate this within a compact quarterly model of the global economy to illustrate how our multi-country approach to modeling oil markets can be used to identify country-specific oil-supply shocks. On the empirical side, estimating the GVAR-Oil model for 27 countries/regions over the period 1979Q2 to 2013Q1, we show that the global economic implications of oil-supply shocks (due to, for instance, sanctions, wars, or natural disasters) vary considerably depending on which country is subject to the shock. In particular, we find that adverse shocks to Iranian oil output are neutralized in terms of their effects on the global economy (real outputs and financial markets) mainly due to an increase in Saudi Arabian oil production. In contrast, a negative shock to oil supply in Saudi Arabia leads to an immediate and permanent increase in oil prices, given that the loss in Saudi Arabian production is not compensated for by the other oil producers. As a result, a Saudi Arabian oil supply shock has significant adverse effects for the global economy with real GDP falling in both advanced and emerging economies, and large losses in real equity prices worldwide.Economic Research Foru

The US oil supply revolution and the global economy

© 2018 The Author(s) This paper investigates the global macroeconomic consequences of falling oil prices due to the oil revolution in the USA, using a global VAR model estimated for 38 countries/regions over the period 1979Q2–2011Q2. Set identification of the US oil supply shock is achieved through imposing dynamic sign restrictions on the impulse responses of the model. The results show that there are considerable heterogeneities in the responses of different countries to a US supply-driven oil price shock, with real GDP increasing in both advanced and emerging market oil-importing economies, output declining in commodity exporters, inflation falling in most countries, and equity prices rising worldwide. Overall, our results suggest that a US supply-driven oil price shock (equivalent to a 10–12% fall per quarter in the price of oil) results in an increase in global growth by 0.16–0.37 percentage points in the medium term. This is mainly due to an increase in spending by oil-importing countries, which exceeds the decline in expenditure by oil exporters.Kamiar Mohaddes gratefully acknowledges financial support from the Economic Research Forum (ERF

Oil Prices and the Global Economy: Is It Different This Time Around?

The recent plunge in oil prices has brought into question the generally accepted view that lower oil prices are good for the US and the global economy. In this paper, using a quarterly multi-country econometric model, we first show that a fall in oil prices tends relatively quickly to lower interest rates and inflation in most countries, and increase global real equity prices. The effects on real output are positive, although they take longer to materialize (around 4 quarters after the shock). We then re-examine the effects of low oil prices on the US economy over different sub-periods using monthly observations on real oil prices, real equity prices and real dividends. We confirm the perverse positive relationship between oil and equity prices over the period since the 2008 financial crisis highlighted in the recent literature, but show that this relationship has been unstable when considered over the longer time period of 1946.2016. In contrast, we find a stable negative relationship between oil prices and real dividends which we argue is a better proxy for economic activity (as compared to equity prices). On the supply side, the effects of lower oil prices differ widely across the different oil producers, and could be perverse initially, as some of the major oil producers try to compensate their loss of revenues by raising production. Taking demand and supply adjustments to oil price changes as a whole, we conclude that oil markets equilibrate but rather slowly, with large episodic swings between low and high oil prices.global oil market