The Impact of Oil Prices on GDP: The Case of Kazakhstan

This thesis analyzes the impact of oil prices on the country's GDP using the example of Kazakhstan over the period from 1993 to 2018. For this, macroeconomic variables such as inflation and exports were used. The data was checked for stationarity based on the unit root test, and the Johansen Cointegration test was used to check long-term dependence. Both tests showed that the stationarity is much less than expected, but there is cointegration between some of the variables. For this reason, the role of oil prices in various factors of the economy of Kazakhstan was investigated on the basis of a model using the Vector Error Correction model (VECM) in the long term and the Vector Autoregression model (VAR) for data analysis in the short term. Last but not least, Gisser and Goodwin approach were applied to understand what policies more useful to regulate the economy in the event of an oil price shock. In the theoretical part all relevant theories regarding the influence of oil prices on the economic situation of countries are considered, namely: the theory of natural resources, the theory of economic growth, the Dutch disease, factors affecting the change in oil prices. The economy of Kazakhstan and the role of the energy sector for the country were also considered in this part. Then were discussed and summarized existing studies on this topic by other authors. Data was obtained from the IMF and the National Bank of the Republic of Kazakhstan.