An essential element of the work of the Fund is to monitor and forecast international trade. This paper uses SWIFT messages on letters of credit, together with crude oil prices and new export orders of manufacturing Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI), to improve the short-term forecast of...

A model for world crude oil and natural gas markets is estimated. It confirms low price and high income elasticities of demand for both crude oil and natural gas, which explains the market power of oil producers and price volatility following shocks. The paper establishes a relationship between...

We employ a set of sign restrictions on the generalized impulse responses of a Global VAR-model, estimated for 38 countries/regions over the period 1979-2011Q2, to discriminate - between supply-driven and demand-driven oil-price shocks and to study the time profile of their macroeconomic effects...

This paper analyzes spillovers from macroeconomic shocks in systemic economies (China, the Euro Area, and the United States) to the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region as well as outward spillovers from a GDP shock in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries and MENA oil exporters to...

This paper documents the determinants of real oil price in the global market based on SVAR model embedding transitory and permanent shocks on oil demand and supply as well as speculative disturbances. We find evidence of significant differences in the propagation mechanisms of transitory versus...

This paper provides new empirical evidence of the macroeconomic effects of public investment in developing economies. Using public investment forecast errors to identify unanticipated changes in public investment, the paper finds that increased public investment raises output in the short and...

I carry out a business cycle accounting exercise (Chari, Kehoe and McGrattan, 2007) on theU.S. data measured in wage units (Farmer (2010)) for the entire postwar period. In contrast toa conventional approach, this approach preserves common medium-term business cyclefluctuations in GDP, its...

The effect that the recent decline in the price of oil has had on growth is far from clear, with many observers at odds to explain why it does not seem to have provided a significant boost to the world economy. This paper aims to address this puzzle by providing a systematic analysis of the...

In November 2014, OPEC announced a new strategy geared towards improving its market share. Oil-market analysts interpreted this as an attempt to squeeze higher-cost producers including US shale oil out of the market. Over the next year, crude oil prices crashed, with large repercussions for the...

This paper provides new evidence of the macroeconomic effects of public investment in advanced economies. Using public investment forecast errors to identify the causal effect of government investment in a sample of 17 OECD economies since 1985 and model simulations, the paper finds that...