1,734,121 research outputs found
A direct test of the endogeneity of money: implications for Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries
Get PDFThis paper contributes to the ongoing discussion about the endogeneity of money supply by empirically investigating the GCC countries. We propose and implement a direct test of money supply endogeneity that depends on econometric specification of exogeneity. To be able to make comparisons with previous studies in the literature, we also conducted Granger Causality tests to analyze the causality relationship between bank credit and money supply. Both of the empirical studies provide empirical evidence for the endogeneity of money supply in GCC countries. The results of the paper have many significant monetary policy implications for the upcoming monetary unification of the GCC countries.
On the Optimality of a GCC Monetary Union: Structural VAR, Common Trends and Common Cycles Evidence
Get PDFThis paper examines the suitability of the proposed monetary union among the members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). To do so, we identify the underlying structural shocks that these economies are subject to and assess the extent to which the shocks are symmetric. Additionally, we test for common trends and common business cycles among the GCC economies. We find that while the transitory demand shocks areare typically symmetric, the permanent supply shocks are asymmetric. Furthermore, we do not find synchronous long-run and short-rum movements in output. Despite the progress that has been made in terms of integration, our findings indicate thet the conditions for forming a GCC monetary union have not as yet been met.Gulf Cooperation Council, GCC, optimal monetary union, cointegration,common cycles, structural VAR
Measuring the Economic Impact of an EU–GCC Free Trade Agreement. CEPS Working Documents No. 206, 1 July 2004
Get PDFEconomic growth rates in the Gulf region have languished in recent years and need to be raised to accommodate the rapidly growing populations and social aspirations of the region. Using a simple model of world trade, this report investigates the economic impacts of the new customs union of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and the proposed free trade agreement (FTA) between the GCC and European Union. The quantitative results suggest that the new customs union and proposed EU-GCC free trade agreement both appreciably expand trade and improve economic welfare in the GCC countries, with little significant economic impact on the EU. As expected, the FTA results in larger GCC economic gains than the customs union because it affords GCC consumers greater opportunity to enjoy imports at internationally competitive prices. Although welfare gains under the proposed FTA closely approximate those under open regionalism (concerted trade liberalisation on a most favoured nation basis), reducing the 5% GCC common external tariff to about 3% as part of the FTA negotiations would not only ensure near-maximum trade performance and welfare gains but also add further to the attractiveness of the GCC countries as a location for foreign direct investment
Do Oil-Rich GCC Countries Finance US Current Account Deficit?
Get PDFGiven the secrecy that wraps the flows of the GCC countries petrodollar surpluses to the United States and the pressures on these countries to spend and recycle more, this study attempts to uncover the direct and reverse causal relationships between the GCC financial accounts and the US current account deficit. It examines whether the GCC petrodollar surpluses are a global savings glut (an external factor) that causes the US current account deficit or in contrary this deficit is home-grown and the petrodollar savings glut hypothesis does not hold. It particularly focuses on worlds largest oil exporter to find out if the homegrown deficit hypothesis for the worlds largest oil consumer holds. It also investigates which types of investments or components of GCC financial accounts help cause the US deficit the most. The implications and policy recommendations for this growing source of global external imbalances are also provided. --Capital account,Financial account,Direct and reverse causality
Is the US dollar a suitable anchor for the newly proposed GCC currency?
Get PDFResponses of inflation and non-oil output growth from the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries to monetary policy shocks from the United States (US) were estimated to determine whether there is evidence to support the US Dollar as the anchor for the proposed unified currency. A structural vector autoregression identified with short-run restrictions was employed for each country with Fed funds rate as the US monetary policy instrument, non-oil output growth, and inflation. The main results suggest that for inflation, the GCC countries show synchronised responses to monetary policy shocks from the US which are similar to inflation in the US, and for non-oil output growth, there is no clear indication that US monetary policy can be as effective for the GCC countries as it is domestically. Consequently, importing US monetary policy via a Dollar peg may guarantee only stable inflation for the GCC countries - not necessarily stable non-oil output growth. If the non-oil output response is made conscientiously - and there are concerns over the Dollar's ability to perform its role as a store of value - a basket peg with both the US Dollar and the Euro may be a sound alternative as confirmed by the variance decomposition analysis of our augmented SVAR with a proxy for the European short-term interest rate.GCC Countries, US monetary policy shock, monetary union, currency peg, SVARs
On the short-term influence of oil price changes on stock markets in gcc countries: linear and nonlinear analyses
Get PDFThis paper examines the short-run relationships between oil prices and GCC stock markets. Since GCC countries are major world energy market players, their stock markets may be susceptible to oil price shocks. To account for the fact that stock markets may respond nonlinearly to oil price shocks, we have examined both linear and nonlinear relationships. Our findings show that there are significant links between the two variables in Qatar, Oman, and UAE. Thus, stock markets in these countries react positively to oil price increases. For Bahrain, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia we found that oil price changes do not affect stock market returns.GCC stock markets, oil prices, linear and nonlinear analyses
On the Influence of Oil Prices on Stock Markets: Evidence from Panel Analysis in GCC Countries
Get PDFThis paper implements recent bootstrap panel cointegration techniques and Seemingly Unrelated regression (SUR) methods to investigate the existence of a long-run relationship between oil prices and Gulf Corporation Countries (GCC) stock markets. Since GCC countries are major world energy market players, their stock markets are likely to be susceptible to oil price shocks. Using two different (weekly and monthly) datasets covering respectively the periods from 7 June 2005 to 21 October 2008, and from January 1996 to December 2007, our investigation shows that there is evidence for cointegration of oil prices and stock markets in GCC countries, while the SUR results indicate that oil price increases have a positive impact on stock prices, except in Saudi Arabia.GCC stock markets, oil prices, panel cointegration analysis
The Responsiveness of Remittances to the Oil Price: The Case of the GCC
Get PDFWe investigate the responsiveness of remittances from the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries to the changes in the price of crude oil. Most of the GCC countries rank in the top 20 remitting countries in the world. We find that oil price elasticity of remittances is around 0.4. While most studies have examined the impact of remittances on the real economic activities in the receiving countries, this study emphasises the impact of remittances on the remitting countries. We examine various policy implications with regard to macroeconomic shocks, monetary policy and fiscal policy of the GCC countries.elasticity, remittances, oil price, GCC
Essays on trade integration among GCC countries
No full textThis dissertation consists of the three essays; in these three essays I study different areas of trade integration among Gulf Cooperation Council Countries (GCC) by examining the effect of GCC Free Trade Agreement (GCC FTA) on trade among GCC countries during the 1983-2010 period. In the three essays, different variations of the gravity model of international trade are applied to a set of bilateral trade flows among 54 countries representing GCC countries and their major trade partners during the 1978-2010 period.The first essay is presented in chapter two, where I investigate the effect of GCC FTA on aggregate trade among GCC countries. The findings of chapter two suggest that GCC FTA has resulted in trade creation among GCC countries during the 1983-2010 period.The second essay is presented in chapter three, where I investigate the effect of GCC FTA on intra-industry trade among GCC countries. Investigating GCC FTA effects for disaggregate trade is important, as the aggregate results may suffer from aggregation bias. Also, it helps identify the sectors that benefit more from GCC FTA which is an important issue for GCC countries that are seeking diversification of their economies. Chapter three results suggest that GCC FTA trade creation was more concentrated in sectors that exhibit lower shares of GCC intra-trade during the 1983-2010 time period.The third essay is presented in chapter four where I investigate whether GCC FTA trade creation/destruction effect (aggregate and intra-industry trade) among GCC countries was attributed mainly to new trade relations (extensive margin) or to existing trade relations (intensive margin), and whether GCC FTA led to an increase in new trade relations among GCC countries. Chapter four results suggest that GCC FTA trade creation is attributed mostly to trade along the intensive margin while GCC FTA has a negative effect on trade along the extensive margin for most trade sectors.Overall, the results of the three essays suggest that trade integration among GCC countries is not very deep. Although GCC FTA is effective at the aggregate level, however GCC FTA failed to promote trade among GCC countries in larger intra-trade industries and failed in creating trade in new products among GCC countries. GCC countries have plans for a unified currency, since a unified currency requires deeper levels of economic integration than those needed for an FTA, the shallow level of trade integration maybe a sign that GCC economies are not yet ready to adopt a unified currency
Porting GCC to Exposed Pipeline VLIW Processors
No full textEVP and TriMedia are embedded application processors targeted at mobile communication and multimedia domains. Both architectures originate from Philips Semiconductors and are currently developed by ST-Ericsson and NXP Semiconductors, respectively. Both processors have a VLIWarchitecture with an exposed pipeline. Such architectures impose different requirements on a compiler than the majority of existing GCC targets, which are scalar or superscalar machines with interlocked pipelines. First, the exposed pipeline organization requires a compiler to schedule operations such that all data and resource hazards are avoided. Second, a compiler for a VLIW machine has to provide stronger capabilities for discovering and exposing the instruction level parallelism (ILP), as it can not rely on the hardware ILP mechanisms employed in superscalar processors. We have ported GCC to EVP and TriMedia and provided extensions to support code generation for an exposed pipeline VLIW. To increase the amount of exploitable ILP, we have also enhanced the current GCC mechanisms such as loop unrolling and the alias analysis. The ports were benchmarked against the existing production compilers and encouraging results in terms of cycle counts and code size have been achieved.Computer EngineeringElectrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Scienc
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