Person:
Kose, M. Ayhan
Author Name Variants
Fields of Specialization
International macroeconomics,
International finance
Degrees
External Links
Departments
Prospects Group, The World Bank
Externally Hosted Work
Contact Information
Last updated
January 31, 2023
Biography
M. Ayhan Kose is Director of the World Bank Group’s Prospects Group. He previously worked in the Research and Western Hemisphere Departments of the International Monetary Fund. He is a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Research Fellow at the Center for Economic Policy Research, a Dean’s Fellow at University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business, and a Research Associate at the Center for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis.
Publication Search Results
1 - 2 of 2
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Publication
The Great Plunge in Oil Prices: Causes, Consequences, and Policy Responses
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-03)This note combines and distills existing and new research to inform discussion on the topical policy issue of oil prices. Following four years of relative stability at around $105 per barrel (bbl), oil prices have declined sharply since June 2014 and are expected to remain low for a considerable period of time. The drop in prices likely marks the end of the commodity supercycle that began in the early 2000s. Since the past episodes of such sharp declines coincided with substantial fluctuations in activity and inflation, the causes and consequences of and policy responses to the recent plunge in oil prices have led to intensive debates. This paper addresses four questions at the center of these debates, with particular emphasis on emerging market and developing economies: 1) How does the recent decline in oil prices compare with previous episodes? 2) What are the causes of the sharp drop and what is the outlook for oil price? 3) What are the economic and financial consequences? 4) What are the main policy implications? The decline in oil prices will lead to significant real income shifts from oil exporters to oil importers, likely resulting in a net positive effect for global activity over the medium term. However, several factors could counteract the global growth and inflation implications of the lower oil prices. These include weak global demand and limited scope for additional monetary policy easing in many countries. The disinflationary implications of falling oil prices may be muted by sharp adjustments in currencies and effects of taxes, subsidies, and regulations on prices. Regarding fiscal policy, the loss in oil revenues for exporters will strain public finances, while savings among oil importers could help rebuild fiscal space. Lower oil prices also present a window of opportunity to implement structural reforms. These include, in particular, comprehensive and lasting reforms of fuel subsidies, as well as energy taxes more broadly. -
Publication
Understanding the Global Drivers of Inflation: How Important Are Oil Prices?
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-01)This paper examines the global drivers of inflation in 55 countries over 1970–2022. The paper estimates a Factor-Augmented Vector Autoregression model for each country and assess the importance of several global (demand, supply, and oil price) and domestic shocks. It reports three main results. First, global shocks have explained about 26 percent of inflation variation in a typical economy. Oil price shocks accounted for only about 4 percent of inflation variation, but they had a statistically significant impact on inflation in three-quarters of the countries. Second, global shocks have become more important in driving inflation variation over time. The share of inflation variance caused by oil price shocks increased from 4 percent prior to 2000 to roughly 9 percent during 2001–22. They also accounted for some of the steep runup in inflation between mid-2021 and mid-2022. Third, oil price shocks tended to contribute significantly more to inflation variation in advanced economies, countries with stronger global trade and financial linkages, commodity importers, net energy importers, countries without inflation-targeting regimes, and countries with pegged exchange rate regimes. The headline results are robust to a wide range of exercises—including alternative measures of global factors and oil prices—and aggregation of countries.