Browsing by Author "Abou Khodor, Wael"

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    Foreign Exchange Reserves and the Macro-economy in GCC Countries
    (2017) Abou Khodor, Wael
    This research looks into foreign exchange reserves accumulation and macro-economic growth in GCC countries, namely Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates. Using yearly covering the period from 1996 through 2015, the empirical results show positive relationships between foreign exchange reserves accumulation on one hand, and oil prices, GDP, current account to GDP, and broad money to GDP on the other hand. Moreover, the results point to negative relationships between foreign exchange reserves accumulation on one hand, and real effective exchange rate, debt to GDP, and call money rate on the other hand. However, the results show that the stockpile of foreign exchange reserves in GCC countries is less sensitive to nominal effective exchange rate, imports to GDP, and interest rates on US Dollar. Furthermore, and most importantly, the study shows that both foreign exchange reserves and oil prices appear to spur economic growth in these countries by raising GDP and GDP per capita.