Oil Price and Exchange Rate Nexus-Evidence From Nigeria

Abstract

Price swings at international crude oil market significantly impact on macroeconomic fundamentals of oil dependent countries. Hence, understanding the relationship between oil price movement and the exchange rate has become imperative especially for oil exporting countries. This paper examines the causal effect between oil prices and Nigerian naira–US dollar exchange rate using frequency daily data for the period 12/07/2010-31/08/2017. Generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (GARCH) and exponential GARCH (EGARCH) models were used to estimate our oil prices and nominal naira exchange rate equation. Our findings reveal a positive relation between oil price and naira exchange rate meaning that an upward movement in the price of oil causes the naira to depreciate. Conversely, any fall in oil price leads to appreciation in the value of the naira. The result has important policy implication given that 90% of the total annual foreign revenue of Nigeria comes from oil thus oil price shocks have severe impact on the Nigerian economy. This justifies the need for Nigeria’s economic diversification to minimize the vulnerability of the Nigerian economy to vagaries of the international crude oil market and to delink the exchange rate and reserve movement from developments in oil prices.