Do Crude Oil Price Changes Affect Economic Welfare? Empirical Evidence from Ghana

Abstract This paper sought to explore the impact of crude oil price changes on economic welfare in Ghana. The paper employed the Autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) estimation technique on an annual time series data spanning 1983 – 2017. The findings revealed that crude oil price changes have a negative and significant impact on economic welfare in the short and long run, albeit marginal. In terms of covariates, the findings revealed that trade openness and gross fixed capital formation have positive and significant impact whilst interest rate have negative impact on economic welfare in both the short and long run. Foreign direct investment had a positive effect, albeit insignificant. The paper recommends among others, the hedging of prices with respect to imported crude oil so as to manage the risks associated with crude oil price changes on economic welfare.   Keywords: Economic Welfare; Crude Oil Prices Changes; Autoregressive Distributed Lag; Ghana