The Current Account of Saudi Economy through Intertemporal Model: Evidence from SVAR

Abstract

The paper aims to analyze the current account of the Saudi economy using an intertemporal modeling and tested by the structural VAR methodology. By deriving the long-run current account to GDP ratio, we analyze the impacts of global and local shocks on the current account. Considering that the Saudi economy is linked to international demand for oil products and domestic demand on consumer goods and technological products, the variances in the current account and output are inevitably influenced by international shocks. The findings indicate that the long-run impact of local shocks on the current account variance exceeds by 3.92 percent its impact on the output variance, reflecting the explanation power of local dynamic shock on the current account growth. Most of the previous papers suggest that the local impact dominates the international one (Souki and Enders, 2008), and few papers advocate that the global impact exceeds the domestic effect Hoffmann (2013). The shocks analysis on the Saudi current account exhibits the relative dominance of the global markets shocks, but local and mainly supply shocks have significant impacts on the current account, referring to a dual local and global influence. Keywords: Current account, Intertemporal modeling, Shocks, SVAR Model, KSA