Economic Effects of Oil and Food Price Shocks in Asia and Pacific Countries: An Application of SVAR Model

This study investigates the economic effects of external oil and food price shocks in the context of selected Asia and Pacific countries including Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, India and Thailand. The study is conducted within the framework of SVAR model using quarterly data over the period 1980 to 2010 although start date varies based on availability of data. The study reveals that resource poor countries that specialize in heavy manufacturing industries like Korea and Taiwan are highly affected by international oil price shocks. Oil price shocks negatively affect industrial output growth and exchange rate and positively affect inflation and interest rates. On the other hand, oil poor nations such as Australia and New Zealand with diverse mineral resources other than oil are not affected by oil price shocks. Only exchange rates are affected by oil price shocks in these countries. Furthermore, countries that are oil poor but specialized in international financial services are also not affected by oil price increase. Similarly, developing country Like India with limited reserve of oil is not affected by oil price shock. However, Thailand possessing a number of natural resources other than oil is not accommodative of oil price shocks. Limited impact of food prices can be recorded for India, Korea and Thailand in terms of industrial output, inflation and interest rate. The major impact of food prices is that it helps depreciating real effective exchange rate for almost all countries except Singapore. As a whole, the effects of external oil and food prices depend on the economic characteristics of the countries. The empirical results of this study suggest that oil and food prices should be considered for policy and forecasting purposes especially for Korea, Taiwan and Thailand.oil price, food price, shocks, economic effects, Asia, Pacific, SVAR, Agricultural and Food Policy, Demand and Price Analysis, Livestock Production/Industries,

Modelling food price volatility and testing heat waves and/or meteor showers effects: Evidence for Asia and Pacific

This paper assesses the volatility and cross country mean and volatility spillover effects of food prices within and across global and selected Asian and Pacific countries namely Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, India and Thailand. The principal method of analysis comprises the development of a set of component GARCH-type models of conditional variance. Volatility characteristics and spillover effects of food prices are examined across a full (1995-2010) and two subsamples (1995-2001 and 2002-2010) with daily food price indices. Main findings of the study are as follows: (1) like other asset prices, food price volatility can be modelled by CGARCH variant of GARCH-family models for world as well as country specific levels, (2) increased risk does not necessarily lead to increased returns for world and specified countries except few instances, (3) mixed evidence of cross country mean and volatility spillover effects are reported. No exact direction of spillover effects from exporter to importer or importer to exporter countries can be drawn rather mixed evidence of spillover from exporter to importer, exporter to exporter, importer to exporter and geographical proximity can be documented. The ‘meteor shower’ hypothesis that the conditional variance of the change in one market depends on the past information of other markets dominates ‘heat wave’ hypothesis that the conditional variance depends on the past information of that market while for shorter time period ‘heat wave’ effects dominate ‘meteor shower’ effects

A mild TCEP-based para-azidobenzyl cleavage strategy to transform reversible cysteine thiol labelling reagents into irreversible conjugates

It has recently emerged that the succinimide linkage of a maleimide thiol addition product is fragile, which is a major issue in fields where thiol functionalisation needs to be robust. Herein we deliver a strategy that generates selective cysteine thiol labelling reagents, which are stable to hydrolysis and thiol exchange