Ndubuisi N. Udemezue

This paper examines the impact of different oil price benchmarks on the revenue profile of OPEC countries from 1990 to 2024. While there are prior studies on this subject, most of these studies adopted a symmetrical approach, overlooking the asymmetric effects of price shocks on government revenues. Additionally, prior research often aggregates oil price benchmarks, simplifying the complex dynamics influencing OPEC revenues. This study fills these gaps by evaluating both symmetrical and asymmetrical responses of the revenue profiles of OPEC countries to major global oil price benchmarks—NYMEX WTI, ICE Brent, DME Oman, and the OPEC reference basket. The study employs linear and nonlinear panel (ARDL) models on annual data from 1990 to 2024. The linear ARDL results indicate that government revenues respond positively to ICE Brent, NYMEX WTI and OPEC spot prices but negatively to DME Oman prices. The nonlinear ARDL model reveals asymmetric responses: revenue is more sensitive to negative shocks in ICE Brent and OPEC prices, while DME Oman price increases reduce revenues. Notably, NYMEX WTI fluctuations have minimal impact. The main conclusion of the paper is that OPEC’s fiscal stability is highly vulnerable to asymmetric, long-run oil price shocks. The study recommends policymakers adopt benchmark-specific fiscal hedging strategies, such as put options, and strategically diversify export markets to mitigate risk.

This paper examines the interaction between health expenditure and health outcomes with due consideration for government effectiveness across developing African economies. The rich data for this study draw from forty-five Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries covering the period 1960 to 2022. The analysis follows a country-specific comparative manner using the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model as the major estimation technique. The results indicate that poor health outcomes are not due to inadequate budgetary allocations alone. Specifically, this study found a cointegrating relationship and strong adjustment of health outcomes deriving from the shocks and dynamics of not just health expenditures, but also government effectiveness. It is therefore recommended that strong institutions and safety nets be created to guard against corruption and leakages that derail the beneficial impact of public health spending. Also, government expenditures should be focused more on cottage and primary health dimensions to better mitigate adverse health conditions in SSA countries.