The Sources of Business Cycles in a Low Income Country

Romain Houssa, Jolan Mohimont and Christopher Otrok

No 2015/040, IMF Working Papers from International Monetary Fund

Abstract: We examine the role of global and domestic shocks in driving macroeconomic fluctuations for Ghana. We are able to study the impact of exogenous shocks including productivity, credit supply, and commodity price shocks. We identify the shocks with a combination of sign and recursive restrictions within Bayesian VAR models. As a benchmark we provide results for South Africa to document the difference between two economies with similar structures but different levels of development. We find that global shocks play a more dominant role in South Africa than in Ghana. These shocks operate through three channels: trade, credit and commodity prices.

Keywords: WP; commodity price; productivity shock; monetary policy; inflation targeting; SA credit; Credit Shocks; Developing Countries; Macroeconomic Stabilization Policies; Sign Restrictions; Bayesian VAR; SA default; South Africa statistics; credit shock; credit supply shock; Credit; Commodity price shocks; Productivity; Real effective exchange rates; Inflation; Africa; Global (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 34
Date: 2015-02-25
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=42737 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Sources of Business Cycles in a Low Income Country (2015)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:imf:imfwpa:2015/040

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/pubs/ord_info.htm

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IMF Working Papers from International Monetary Fund International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC USA. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Akshay Modi ().