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This paper examines the structural competitiveness of oil-rich economies in sub-Saharan Africa relative to other major oil-exporting developing countries, and investigates reasons for systematic differences in the non-oil export performance across these economies. The analysis reveals that oil-rich Africa lags behind other oil-exporters in terms of diversification, global market share and the overall investment climate. The poor performance of their nonoil sector can be largely attributed to weak infrastructure and institutional quality. The results also show that institutional quality is a significant determinant of the extent to which oil abundance affects the competitiveness of the non-oil sector; thereby explaining the divergent experiences of oil-rich economies across the world. This implies that oil wealth does not necessarily weaken the non-oil tradable sector; countries may mitigate the impact of Dutch disease and benefit from oil booms if revenues are used prudently to reduce oil dependence.

The analysis in this paper suggests that import and export volume elasticities are markedly lower in oil-exporting Middle East and Central Asian countries than in non-oil countries in the region. A key implication of this finding is that a real appreciation of the exchange rate in oil-exporting countries would achieve little in terms of expenditure switching: an appreciation does not boost imports and non-oil exports constitute only a small share of GDP and total trade in these countries. Therefore, while a real appreciation lowers the current account surplus of oil-exporting countries through valuation effects, the contribution to lowering global imbalances may be more limited.

Purpose This paper aims to contribute to the clarification of whether the dependence and causality between oil and the macrofundamentals change across different quantiles of the distribution function. Design/methodology/approach Within the context of an asymmetric quantile approach, we drop the assumption that variables operate at the upper tails of the distribution in the way that they operate at the mean. Findings Our innovative approach indicates that the response of oil prices not only differs according to the underlying source of the variables shock but also differs across the quantiles. Originality/value Although a number of recent studies are closely related to our present research, our novel findings offer some important insights that foreshadow the empirical results. The current research addresses to answer the following questions, in sequence: (i) Is there any extreme value dependence between the crude oil and macroeconomic variables? If yes, (ii) is the dependence symmetric or asymmetric? Finally, (iii) can this dependence be driven by the phases of the economic cycle?

This study examined the non-linear relationship between environmental, social, and governance disclosure on bank credit growth in the Middle East and North Africa region. It also investigated whether Islamic banks, GCC banks, and oil-exporting variables affected credit growth. A quantile regression analysis of 394 banks from 11 MENA region countries during 2010-2023 found that the relationship between ESG disclosure and credit growth was an inverted U-shape curve at the lowest quantiles. Then, it became U-shaped at the highest quantiles. The same results showed that for the environmental pillar, the link with credit growth was depicted as an inverted U-shape at the lowest quantiles and then became U-shaped at the highest. However, the relationship between the social and governance pillars and credit growth showed negative and positive effects across all quantiles respectively. Moreover, banks in GCC economies and Islamic banks significantly boosted credit growth. The oil-exporting countries significantly negatively impacted credit growth at the 50th and 75th quantiles, and then the link turned positive on credit growth at the highest quantile. Understanding such relationships will assist bank regulators and policymakers when enforcing specific policies to enhance credit growth in the MENA region’s banking sector.

This paper surveys the academic and policy debate on the origins of global imbalances, their prospects after the global crisis, and their policy implications. A conventional view of global imbalances considers them to primarily result from macroeconomic policies and cyclical forces that cause demand for goods to outstrip supply in the United States and other rich countries and that have the opposite effect in major emerging markets. An alternative view holds that global imbalances are the result of structural distortions and slow-changing factors that primarily affect assets markets. This paper reviews the analytical underpinnings of these two perspectives and the empirical evidence of their respective merits. The paper then assesses the outlook for global imbalances after the crisis, particularly in terms of policy action to reduce their magnitude. Policy intervention is warranted to the extent that the imbalances are driven by welfare-reducing distortions, but in this case, the primary target of policy intervention should be the distortions rather than the imbalances. Finally, the paper examines various forms of international spillovers that may call for multilateral action to limit global imbalances.

Progress in financial inclusion has played a major role in economic development and poverty reduction. However, the environmental impact of financial inclusion calls for urgent implementation of environmental strategies to mitigate climate change. Financial inclusion forces the policies of developed countries to advance and not affect the present and future development of developing countries. Therefore, the current study aims to investigate the direct effects of information and communication technology (ICT) usage on environment as well as its moderating role on the association between financial inclusion and environmental degradation for six oil exporting countries (United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Kuwait, Canada, and the United States), using annual panel data from 1995 to 2019. We also analyze the validity of the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) phenomenon for the entire sample, as well as the role of energy consumption and population. Employing the Method of Moments Quantile Regression (MMQR) with fixed effects, this study supported the existence of EKC phenomenon here as linkage amid human development index and carbon intensity. We find that energy consumption significantly increases carbon intensity. The empirical results showed that the application of internet- and mobile use as indicators of ICT usage lead to environmental preservation in the six oil exporting economies. Also, we observe that financial inclusion has mitigating effects on pollutant emissions, contributing to environmental preservation. Interaction between ICT usage and financial inclusion jointly reduces carbon intensity in all quantile distributions. A robustness check using an alternative proxy of the financial inclusion also confirms that ICT usage significantly and negatively moderates the association between financial inclusion and carbon intensity. Based on the findings of this study, the selected oil exporting countries should integrate financial inclusion with environmental policies to reduce carbon intensity.

The recent relatively high levels of global oil prices have led to a significant improvement in the public finances of several hydrocarbon-exporting countries. However, despite the increase in fiscal buffers, medium-term risks remain high. Fiscal vulnerabilities have increased as a consequence of the substantial spending packages that have been implemented in recent years. This has raised break-even prices-that is, the price levels that ensure that fiscal accounts are in balance at a given level of spending-in these countries. This study analyses such risks and develops measures of fiscal risk stemming from oil price fluctuations. An empirical application to hydrocarbon-exporting countries from the Middle East and North Africa region is included. Additionally, it is noted that countries with large net assets and proven oil reserves are much less vulnerable to fiscal risk than is indicated by standard measures based on break-even prices. 

The main objective of this study was to examine the asymmetric effect of resource tax revenues on non-resource ones in oil-rich countries, as most previous research on the subject has assumed a symmetric resource-non-resource tax revenue nexus. We employed linear ARDL model to analyze the short- and long-term effects and found a negative relationship between resource and non-resource tax revenues. Based on nonlinear ARDL model estimates, empirical results provide strong evidence for the asymmetric effect of resource tax revenues. In the long-run, positive shocks have negative impacts on non-resource tax revenues. Conversely, negative shocks were found to not lead to increased non-resource tax revenues. In addition, findings show that the short-term effects are stronger when resource tax revenues increase.

Oil exporters have run large current account surpluses. We explore oil exporters' role in our understanding and the resolution of global imbalances. Current account dynamics are estimated for oil-exporting countries and the rest of the world. We find that fiscal policy has a much stronger effect on current account of oil exporters than on current account of other countries. The current account adjustment of oil-exporting countries is also faster than that of other countries. We conclude that a change in fiscal policy of oil exporters can have significant and speedy impact on global imbalances.

This study employs the vector autoregressive model (VAR), impulse response function and variance decomposition to study the impact of oil price shocks on components of government spending on both oil-exporting and oil importing countries over the period from 1980 to 2018. While the vast majority of previous studies focused on the impact of oil price shocks on government spending, this study emphasized the impact of these shocks on the current and capital government expenditure. It was found that oil price shocks affect government current expenditure positively in the two groups of countries. While it affects government capital expenditure positively in oil-exporting countries and negatively in oil-importing countries.