The Influence of Oil Prices on Stock Market Returns: Empirical Evidence from Oil Exporting and Oil Importing Countries

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to study the impact of oil price fluctuations on the stock markets and the interest rates from oil importing and oil exporting countries. To this end, Vector Autoregressive (VAR) models are estimated and pairwise Granger Causality tests are performed to the stationary series in order to analyse the short-term relationships among the variables. Also, the Johansen approach for multiple equations is carried out in order to test for cointegration among the series. Finally, the existence of cointegration set the estimation of Vector Error-Correction Models (VECMs) to investigate the long-term links between the financial variables and the oil prices. The major findings of this paper include: first, the interaction between the oil prices and the stock markets is much stronger than with the interest rates in the short and in the long-run. Second, the impact on oil importing countries is more significant than on oil exporting countries. Finally, it might be possible that the fluctuations in oil prices have different effects on developed and developing countries.