Khalid M. Kisswani

Exploring the nexus between oil prices and sectoral stock prices: Nonlinear evidence from Kuwait stock exchange

Abstract This paper investigates the relationship between oil prices (Brent and West Texas Intermediate (WTI)) and Kuwait Stock Exchange (KSE) prices at the sector level. In a nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) model, ten major sectors in Kuwait are studied using daily data from 3 January 2000 to 9 December 2015 for some sectors, and 14 May 2012 to 9 December 2015 for others. The findings show asymmetric long run effects between oil prices and some Kuwait sectoral stock prices. For these sectors, the empirical results offer evidence of short run asymmetric effect in case of WTI price measure, but no evidence of asymmetry was found in case of Brent price.

Does oil price variability affect ASEAN exchange rates? Evidence from panel cointegration test

ABSTRACT Using panel data, this article investigates the long-run relationship between real oil prices and real exchange rates for selected ASEAN countries by utilizing quarterly data from 1973:Q1 to 2013:Q4. The modelling implementation starts with the determination of the stationarity condition of the variables which are found to be integrated of order one. Using Maddala and Wu’s (1999) panel cointegration test, the article finds evidence of cointegration among the variables. The fully modified OLS (FMOLS) and dynamic OLS (DOLS) are then used to estimate the long-run relationship between the variables, followed by applying Toda–Yamamoto causality test. The findings exhibit bidirectional causality between real oil prices and real exchange rates in the long run, where it is highly significant.

Revisiting the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis: evidence from the ASEAN-5 countries with structural breaks

ABSTRACT This paper tests if the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis exists for ASEAN-5 countries in an annual sample data that covers 1971–2013, by utilizing Auto Regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) methodology. The empirical findings give support for the EKC hypothesis for Thailand only, after considering the structural breaks. Furthermore, the paper tests the EKC hypothesis for a panel data of the ASEAN-5 by adopting the Pooled Mean Group (PMG) methodology. The results show that the long-run estimates provide no evidence for the EKC hypothesis. Finally, the paper examines the causality between the CO2 emissions and GDP. For individual countries, bidirectional causality was found in the case of Thailand and Malaysia, plus unidirectional causality running from GDP and squared GDP to CO2 emissions was found for Indonesia, but a unidirectional causality running from CO2 emissions to GDP and squared GDP was found for the Philippines, however, no causality effect was found for Singapore. Furthermore, the pairwise Dumitrescu and Hurlin Panel Causality test show a bidirectional effect between CO2 emissions and both GDP in addition to squared GDP.

The Effects of the U.S. Price Control Policies on OPEC: Lessons from the Past

In 1973-1974, the U.S. faced the so-called “Energy Crisis” due to the Arab oil embargo and a quadrupling of world crude oil prices by OPEC. This led the U.S. to use a” Price Control” policy in the domestic energy market. The effects of such policy are explored and well documented. However, the responses of OPEC producers to such a policy need further attention. This paper examines the effects of these price controls on OPEC‟s extraction path. It also examines the relation between the harm function and the change in OPEC production. The results show some evidence that OPEC did respond differently to price controls applied by the U.S. For some periods it cut production, while in other periods production levels increased. The results also show some evidence regarding Wirl (2008) that OPEC includes political support as part of its objective function when it comes to oil extraction.