Asymmetric Impacts of Oil Price on Inflation: An Empirical Study of African OPEC Member Countries

Umar Bala and Chin Lee ()
Additional contact information
Umar Bala: Department of Economics, Faculty of Management and Social Sciences, Bauchi State University, P.M.B. 65 Gadau, Nigeria

Energies, 2018, vol. 11, issue 11, 1-21

Abstract: This study investigates the asymmetric impacts of oil price changes on inflation in Algeria, Angola, Libya, and Nigeria. Three different kinds of oil price data were applied in this study: the actual spot oil price of individual countries, the OPEC reference basket oil price, and an average of the Brent, WTI, and Dubai oil price. Autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) dynamic panels were used to estimate the short- and long-term impacts. Also, we partitioned the oil price into positive and negative changes to capture asymmetric impacts and found that both the positive and negative oil price changes positively influenced inflation. However, the impact was found to be more significant when the oil prices dropped. We also found that the money supply, the exchange rate, and the gross domestic product (GDP) are positively related to inflation, while food production is negatively related to inflation. Accordingly, policy-makers should be cautious when formulating policies between the positive and negative changes in oil prices, as it was shown that inflation increased when the oil price dropped. Additionally, the use of a contractionary monetary policy would help to reduce the inflation rate. Lastly, we suggest that the government should encourage domestic food production, both in quantity and quality, to reduce inflation.

Keywords: oil price; food production; inflation; asymmetric; Algeria; Angola; Libya; Nigeria (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (46)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/11/11/3017/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/11/11/3017/ (text/html)

Related works:
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:gam:jeners:v:11:y:2018:i:11:p:3017-:d:180137

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().