The impact of oil prices on an oil-importing developing economy

Abstract

This paper analyzes the impact of an increase in the price of oil on a small developing economy. We consider the extent to which the impacts of oil price shocks depend upon the economy's internal production structure and its access to the world financial market, and find that the long-run impact depends much more on the former than the latter. Two critical quantities summarizing the long-run effects are (i) the relative share of oil to labor in output and (ii) the elasticity of substitution in production. We supplement the formal analysis with numerical simulations, thereby enabling us to characterize the short-run dynamics. Overall, the simulations can replicate much of the empirical evidence used to characterize the effects of the recent oil price increases on the economy. They also highlight the sensitivity of the effect of the oil price to the elasticity of substitution.