Impacts of Oil Shocks on Exchange Rates and Macroeconomic Variables: A multi-country analysis

This paper provides a quantitative assessment of the relative importance of exogenous shocks related to oil price determination on countries' exchange rates and outputs within the same framework of the structural vector autoregression (VAR) model. Because we are interested in the effect of oil price changes on energy exporters and importers, we chose Australia, Canada, Japan, Norway, and the United Kingdom as the sample countries. We assume four structural shocks: (i) oil supply shocks, (ii) global demand shocks, (iii) oil price fluctuations unrelated to supply and demand, and (iv) pure exchange rate fluctuations unrelated to other structural shocks. Differing responses to structural shocks explain the correlation structure of these currencies, while pure exchange rate shocks are the main sources of exchange rate volatilities. We also examine the roles of structural shocks in explaining macro variables, taking Australia and Japan as examples. We find evidence that global demand shocks and nonfundamental oil price fluctuations have a strong impact on gross domestic product (GDP) and export growth for both countries, while pure exchange rate shocks are relatively unimportant in explaining Japan's macroeconomic variables.