The Effect of Oil Price Changes on Some of the Main Iranian Macroeconomic Variables

Iran is one of major oil producers and exporters in the world. Since the crude oil export is a major source of Iran’s income, it indirectly influences the country’s other economic activities. The aim of this paper is to investigate the effect of oil price changes on major macroeconomic variables including gross domestic product, government capital expenditures, money supply and inflation rate in Iran during 1971-2007 period. A vector Autoregression (VAR) model is estimated for this purpose. Impulse Response Function (IRF), the Forecast Error Variance Decomposition (FEVD) are then utilized to analyze the results. The major findings are as follows: 1-Gross domestic product, government capital expenditures, money supply and inflation rate are positively affected by oil price fluctuations. 2-Forecast Error Variance Decomposition analysis, indicates that oil price plays a major role in explaining inflation rate and money supply, but it’s role with regard to gross domestic product and government capital expenditures is secondary.