Business Cycles in an Oil Economy: Lessons from Norway

67 Pages Posted: 19 Jan 2017

See all articles by Drago Bergholt

Drago Bergholt

Norges Bank

Vegard H. Larsen

BI Norwegian Business School, Department of Data Science and Analytics

Date Written: October 20, 2016

Abstract

The recent oil price fall has created concern among policy makers regarding the consequences of terms of trade shocks for resource-rich countries. This concern is not a minor one – the world's commodity exporters combined are responsible for 15–20% of global value added. We estimate a two-country New Keynesian model in order to quantify the importance of oil price shocks for Norway – a large, prototype petroleum exporter. Domestic supply chains link mainland (non-oil) Norway to the off-shore oil industry, while fiscal authorities accumulate income in a sovereign wealth fund. Oil prices and the international business cycle are jointly determined abroad. These features allow us to disentangle the structural sources of oil price fluctuations, and how they affect mainland Norway. The estimated model provides three important results: First, pass-through from oil prices to the oil exporter implies up to 20% higher business cycle volatility. Second, the majority of spillover effects stem from non-oil disturbances such as innovations in international investment efficiency. Conventional oil market shocks, in contrast, explain at most 10% of the Norwegian business cycle. Third, the prevailing fiscal regime provides substantial protection against external shocks while domestic supply linkages make the oil exporter more exposed.

Suggested Citation

Bergholt, Drago and Larsen, Vegard H., Business Cycles in an Oil Economy: Lessons from Norway (October 20, 2016). Norges Bank Working Paper 16/2016, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2901421 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2901421

Drago Bergholt (Contact Author)

Norges Bank ( email )

P.O. Box 1179
Oslo, N-0107
Norway

Vegard H. Larsen

BI Norwegian Business School, Department of Data Science and Analytics ( email )

Nydalsveien 37
Oslo, 0442
Norway

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
221
Abstract Views
1,123
Rank
250,651
PlumX Metrics