CRUDE OIL PRICE VOLATILITY AND ECONOMIC GROWTH: MEDIATING ROLE OF MACROECONOMIC INDICATORS

This study examines the correlation between oil price fluctuation and absolute business development in Pakistan. Our study focusses on three economic sectors, agriculture and livestock, manufacturing and electricity production and transportation from 1980 to 2018 using the autoregressive distributed lag, with linear regression to evaluate the (time series or panel) data (please elaborate the frequency of data as well either it is daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly or yearly data). Our findings reveal negative impact of oil price on the economic development overall, and manufacturing, electricity production and livestock sectors individually; while, there is positive relationship observed with communication and transport sectors. There is need for policymaker's attention on highly oil-dependent sectors to run their operations. Empirical findings suggest a 30% shortage of oil supply responsible for the highest fluctuated structure of oil pricing, which suddenly increases the projected welfare loss through a 40% reduction in gross domestic product. This study suggests that the country should maintain a minimum 100-day strategic petroleum reserves to hedge any adverse effect of oil price fluctuation on economic and social welfare losses.