Unwrapping the Intricate Interplay Between Energy Dependency and Macroeconomic Volatility in OECD Countries

Abstract

While research has explored the connection between oil prices and macroeconomic performance, there is limited understanding of the interaction between overseas energy imports dependency and macroeconomic fluctuations. This work addresses the foregoing study using the augmented mean group (AMG) econometrics technique on panel data of 29 OECD net energy-importing countries from 2001 to 2021. The long-run finding unearthed that energy dependency intensifies macroeconomic instability, confirming that relying on overseas energy imports will hamper the smooth functioning of domestic economic machinery in the form of energy supply interruption. Besides energy dependency, this study uses government consumption spending, regulatory quality, and globalisation as control variables in macroeconomic instability function. The long-run outcomes further depict that government consumption spending and globalisation aggravate macroeconomic instability while regulatory quality reduces it. These findings are further checked by applying the pooled mean group-autoregressive distributed lag (PMG-ARDL) method. In conclusion, this study provides policy implications to prioritise domestically produced energy use and diversify energy sources by increasing the share of clean energy in the total energy mix.