Descripción:
This paper examines the macroeconomic implications of symmetric and asymmetric oil price and oil revenue shocks in Nigeria, using the vector autore- gressive (var) estimation technique. The paper finds that both positive and nega- tive oil price shocks influence real government expenditure only in the long run rather than in the short run, while examining positive and negative shocks to ex- ternal reserves revealed stronger implications for expenditure in the long run, with positive rather than negative oil price shocks having stronger short and long run effects on real gdp, and therefore triggering inflationary pressure and domes- tic currency depreciation as importation rises. This implies that the country ex- hibits the Dutch disease syndrome in the short and long run. However, results obtained show that oil revenue shocks are capable of impeding economic growth only in the long run while raising general price levels marginally in the short run after the initial shocks, with evidence of serious threat to interest rate and the domestic currency in the short and medium term, as the volume of imports in- creases significantly along with the external reserves. Findings on the asymmet- ric effects of oil revenue shocks revealed that positive shocks to oil revenue stimu- late expansionary fiscal posture in the Nigerian economy in the short run in line with theory, thereby creating inflationary pressure and domestic currency depre- ciation. The combined implications of these discoveries suggest the need for prop- er coordination of fiscal and monetary policy for sustainable macroeconomic sta- bility to be achieved.