The recent plunge in oil prices has brought into question the generally accepted view that lower oil prices are good for the United States 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...

This paper investigates the causes of extreme fluctuations in commodity prices from 1990 to 2010. Analyzing two very distinct commodities-crude oil and fine wine, we find that macroeconomic factors are the main determinants of commodity prices. Although supply constraints have the expected...

This paper examines the impact of government size on how output and government expenditure respond to oil price shocks in 28 oil-exporting countries between 1990 and 2016. Results suggest that if the size of government (measured by government expenditure-to-(non-oil) GDP ratio) is larger,...

This paper examines the behavior of crude oil prices since 1980, and in particular the volatility of these prices. The empirical analysis covers “spot” prices for one of the key internationally traded crudes, namely Dated Brent Blend. A GARCH (generalized autoregressive conditional...

This paper examines the cyclicality of fiscal behavior in 28 developing oil-producing countries (OPCs) during 1990-2009. After testing five fiscal measures - government expenditure, consumption, investment, non-oil revenue, and non-oil primary balance - and correcting for reverse causality...

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...

We estimate the average fiscal multiplier, allowing multipliers to be heterogeneous across countries or over time and correlated with the size of government spending. We demonstrate that this form of nonseparable unobserved heterogeneity is empirically relevant and address it by estimating a...

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 1979Q2–2011Q2, to discriminate between supply-driven and demand-driven oil-price shocks and to study the time profile of their macroeconomic...