Information on economic policy uncertainty (EPU) does matter in predicting oil returns especially when accounting for omitted nonlinearities in the relationship between these two variables via a time-varying coefficient approach. In this work, we compare the forecastability of standard, Bayesian...

This paper examines whether a volatility/risk transmission exists between world energy and the US financial markets during the pre-, the in-, and the post-2008 crisis periods by employing world oil prices and Cleveland financial stress index. It also explores causal dynamics and derives the...

The relationship between oil and the price level has always garnered attention from policy makers and role players in the market. Periods of high oil price volatility is thought to have negative repercussions for domestic price levels in an oil importing country. Research in the past has shown...

The association between oil prices and inflation has remained an intriguing issue for media, academic as well as policy enquiry. Against this backdrop, we perform the frequency-domain causality test to investigate whether the growth rate of oil prices has predictive content for inflation in...

The aim of this paper is to investigate the causal relationship between agricultural prices in South Africa and global oil prices. A nonlinear Granger causality test based on moment conditions, introduced by Nishiyama et al (2011) is employed and we find that there is indeed a causal...

The recent commodity price boom has spurred interest to understand determinants of commodity price movements. This paper investigates the causal relationship between oil prices and the prices of 25 other commodities, which include both metals and agricultural products, in the presence of...

The oil price-inflation relationship has been at the center of attention among economists and policy makers, especially after 1970’s oil shocks that resulted to a significant increase in the inflation rate in number of countries around the world. In this study, we aim to investigate the...

This paper estimates the equilibrium real exchange rate and the resulting real exchange rate misalignment in Namibia during the period 1970 to 2004. The equilibrium real exchange rate is determined by trade and exchange restrictions (openness), terms of trade and ratio of investment to GDP. An...

The Feldstein-Horioka (FH) puzzle, that is the strong correlation between saving and investment in a world where obstacles to capital mobility are limited, has been studied extensively since it was exposed in 1980. Even though the theoretical and empirical literature has examined many of its...

In this paper we investigate the likelihood of a proposed monetary union in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) being successful from the viewpoint of the Generalised Purchasing Power Parity (GPPP) hypothesis and optimum currency area (OCA) theory. We apply Johansen’s...