Rebeca Jiménez-Rodríguez

Oil Price Shocks and Real GDP Growth: Empirical Evidence for Some OECD Countries

This study assesses empirically the effects of oil price shocks on the real economic activity of the main industrialized countries. Multivariate VAR analysis is carried out using both linear and non-linear models. The latter category includes three approaches employed in the literature, namely, the asymmetric, scaled and net specifications. Evidence of a non-linear impact of oil prices on real GDP is found. In particular, oil price increases are found to have an impact on GDP growth of a larger magnitude than that of oil price declines, with the latter being statistically insignificant in most cases. Among oil importing countries, oil price increases are found to have a negative impact on economic activity in all cases but Japan. Moreover, the effect of oil shocks on GDP growth differs between the two oil exporting countries in the sample, with the UK being negatively affected by an oil price increase and Norway benefiting from it.

Oil shocks and the macro-economy: a comparison across high oil price periods

Oil prices are found to exert nonlinear effects on major advanced economies. Real outputs reaction is much more visible during the periods of high oil prices of the mid-1970s and early 1980s. Oil prices have had inflationary consequences in several economies not only in those two periods, but also during the spike of 1990. There is also evidence that inflation has picked up in some economies as a result of the oil price hikes of 1999–2000, and even more recently in the case of the US.

The Industrial Impact of Oil Price Shocks: Evidence from the Industries of Six OECD Countries

Most of the studies existing in theoretical and empirical understanding of the macroeconomic consequences of oil price shocks have been focused on US aggregate data. In contrast to these studies, this paper assesses empirically the dynamic effects of oil price shocks on the output of the main manufacturing industries in six OECD countries using an identified vector autoregression for each economy. The pattern of responses to an oil price shock by industrial output is diverse across the four European Monetary Union (EMU) countries under consideration (France, Germany, Italy, and Spain), but broadly similar in the UK and the US. Evidence on cross-industry heterogeneity of oil shock effects within the EMU countries is also reported. Moreover, our baseline results are quite robust with respect to changes in the number of lags, identification assumptions, and real oil price definition.

Business Cycle Synchronization between Euro Area and Central and Eastern European Countries

We analyze the degree of co-movements in real macroeconomic aggregates across selected euro area and Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries applying a multi-factor model. Our results suggest that the evolution of the global European factor matches well the narrative of main economic events between 1995 and 2011, capturing among others the recession during the recent global financial and economic crisis. This factor plays a central role in explaining real output growth variability in euro area and is negligible in CEE countries. Furthermore, using Markov switching models and concordance indices, we shed light on an increase in business cycle synchronization, with the degree of concordance between country-specific and European business cycles being high.

Aggregate Employment Dynamics and (Partial) Labour Market Reforms

European labour markets have undergone several important innovations over the last three decades. Most countries have reformed their labour markets since the mid�?1990s, with the liberalization of fixed�?term contracts and temporary work agencies being the common elements to such reforms. This paper investigates the existence of a change in the dynamic behaviour of the aggregate employment for major European Union countries – France, Germany, Italy and Spain. According to our results, partial labour market reforms have made the response of the aggregate employment to output shocks larger and quite comparable to that found for the UK – the most flexible labour market in Europe since the Thatcher reforms.

Macroeconomic Structure and Oil Price Shocks at the Industrial Level

This paper analyses the role of the macroeconomic structure in the response of industrial output to an oil price shock in six OECD countries. The modelling of the macroeconomic structure is important in examining the effect of an oil price shock on the industry-level output, since the analysis of the transmission mechanisms helps us to better understand the response of industrial output to such a shock. Thus, cross-country differences found in the responses of industrial output to oil price shocks within the European Monetary Union can be partially explained by differences in the transmission mechanisms of such shocks.

Oil price shocks and Japanese macroeconomic developments

Using quarterly data for Japan over the period 1976:I–2008:II within a modelling strategy incorporating information about structural breaks in the variables included to represent the macroeconomic transmission channels, this paper shows that oil price shocks led to a fall in industrial production and higher inflation. However, these effects are only evident in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In more recent episodes of sharp oil price increases, inflationary effects are barely visible, and there is very limited evidence of oil‐induced industrial slowdowns.

The VARying Effect of Foreign Shocks in Central and Eastern Europe

This paper investigates the impact of international shocks – interest rate, commodity price and industrial production shocks – on key macroeconomic variables in ten Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries by using near-VAR models and monthly data from the early 1990s to 2009. In contrast to previous work, the empirical analysis takes explicit account of the possibility of (multiple) structural breaks in the underlying time series. We establish strong evidence of structural breaks, particularly along the years 2007 and 2008, suggesting the very relevant impact of the recent global crisis on CEE economies. Moreover, our results suggest that the way how countries react to world commodity price shocks is related to the underlying economic structure and the credibility of the monetary policy. We also find that some countries like Slovakia and Slovenia – already euro area members – react stronger to foreign industrial production shocks than other countries and that the responses to such shocks are strongly correlated for selected CEE countries. Nevertheless, our results also shed light on substantial differences in responses to foreign interest rate shocks that originate from the US or the euro area.

Oil-induced stagflation: a comparison across major G7 economies and shock episodes

This article finds strong evidence of oil-induced stagflation in major G7 economies. Oil shocks provoked output losses and higher inflation on a widespread basis from the mid-1970s to the early 1980s, as well as – to a lesser extent – in the new millennium.

Nominal and real exchange rate co-movements

This paper investigates the existence of common movements between nominal and real exchange rates across different countries in three regions - North America, Western Europe, and Central and Eastern Europe - by using the multi-factor model. It also examines the role of macroeconomic fundamentals (i.e., prices, money and output) in order to explain the variance of the exchange rate global factor. The findings suggest the existence of co-movements among exchange rates. The exchange rate global factor seems to play a central role in explaining exchange rate variability in Western Europe, whereas regional and country-specific factors are the most important ones in North America and Central and Eastern Europe, respectively. Finally, the paper shows empirical evidence in favour of the connection between exchange rate global factor variability and macroeconomic fundamentals. Moreover, the importance of fundamentals has increased in the recent global crisis.