Oil Revenue Uncertainty, Sanctions and the Volatility of Macroeconomic Variables

The IMF reports that, over 60% of foreign trade income and 40% of government revenue of Iran comes from the oil and gas sectors, which has always been a source of volatilities in the economy. The imposed sanctions on the Iranian economy also influence economic activities by reducing currency earnings and restricting access to capital and intermediaries goods. Understanding extent of the shocks’ effects of sanctions and fluctuations in oil revenue, are key factors for the policymakers in foreseeable planning risks. In order to examine the effect of sanctions and oil price(revenue) fluctuations on the country's economy, this paper intends to quantify the effects of sanction by making use of a VARMAX GARCH-in-Mean Asymmetric BEKK model in terms of structural failure of the conditional variance. We use real non-oil GDP, Iranian heavy oil exports, exchange rates, total stock market index and sanctions index data over 1991:Q2 to 2018:Q1. The results show that a shock of oil revenue or sanctions index affects activities in all of three sectors. The increasing sanctions pressure leads to a spillover effect of uncertainty to all sectors under study and a decline in production activities and national currency depreciations; but in turn the relative share of the stock market in the portfolio of investors' choice increases. Strong evidence for asymmetric effects of impulses of sanction and oil revenue on the study sections is observed.