IMPACT OF INTERNATIONAL OIL PRICE CHANGES ONDOMESTIC FOOD PRICES IN EGYPT USING ANON-LINEAR AUTO-REGRESSIVE DISTRIBUTED LAG

This study applies a non-linear autoregressive distributed lagmodel to a quarterly time series dataset covering the period 1990-2014 toexamine the impact of international oil price changes on domestic food pricesin Egypt. The econometric results show that, in the short run, a 10% increasein international oil prices would lead to an increase of about 8% in the level ofEgypt’s domestic food prices. In contrast, the results point out to the absenceof a significant impact of international oil price decline on Egyptian domesticfood prices in the short run. With respect to long run estimates, the resultsindicate that positive and statistically significant relationship exist betweeninternational oil price changes (both increases and decreases) and the level ofdomestic food prices in Egypt. Specifically, a 10% increase in international oil
prices would result in around 1.7% increase in food prices in Egypt; whereasa decline of 10% in oil prices in the international market would lead to adecline of about 2.4% in the level of domestic food prices in the country. In
light of these results, the study concluded certain number of policyrecommendations that may help enhance the resilience of the Egyptian foodmarket to changes in international oil prices, mitigate the negative impacts offood price inflation on poor segments of the Egyptian population, and avoidadverse effects on social stability.