Abstract |
The boom and bust of Commodity Prices have had a significant macroeconomic impact
on commodity-exporter economies. This paper assesses the dynamic impact of Commodity
Prices on the Current Account surplus for several commodity-exporter economies. Because
these economies share several economic features, and since they are subject to the same
external shocks, it is necessary to estimate their behavior simultaneously. Moreover, the
impact of these shocks might be different along the sample of analysis. Thus, we estimate a
Panel VAR model with dynamic inter-dependencies and time varying parameters. Within
this framework, we have computed an average current account indicator and studied the
responses of individual current account balances to shocks in fuel and metal prices. We have
found that our common indicator for the current account follows closely the dynamic pattern
of the commodity price index i.e. surpluses (deficit) are usually associated with increases
(decreases) in commodity prices, and this indicator is statistically significant across the
sample of analysis. At the country level, by comparing the impulse response functions, we
found that commodity price shocks have a similar effect across countries, although their
magnitude differ. In general, our results suggest that the impact on the current account
balances have increased since 2002. In the case of a fuel shock, we do not found significant
current account responses. However, the evidence for a metal shock is more robust, with
higher responses in the case of the metal-exporting countries. |