Oil prices and the stock market in emerging net oil importing countries -

Abstract

Crude oil expenditure constitutes a large portion of most emerging countries’ GDP. Oil is assumed to be one of the most important factors leading to economic prosperity. It follows that understanding the fundamentals of the relationship between oil prices and stock prices is of vital importance especially to investors, policy makers and risk managers dealing with such markets. While many studies have shown direct causalities between oil prices and macroeconomic variables (Hamilton 1983; Mork 1989; Hooker 2002; inter alia), fewer studies focused on the relationship between oil prices and stock prices (Jones and Kaul 1996; inter alia) Moreover, most of the existing literature in this area has concentrated on studying the link between oil prices and stock prices in developed economies. Few have tackled the case of emerging net-oil importing economies. Hence, what I am interested in is to explore the effect of oil price shocks on the stock market of emerging countries, mainly those which are net oil importers. The main objective of this paper will thus be to study the relationship between oil prices and stock prices in Jordan, Chile, Hungary, Czech Republic, and the Philippines using time series analysis.