On September 19th Provost Hilde C. Bjørnland gave a talk and participated in discussions with the World Bank in Washington DC. The seminar was organized by the Chief Economist Office for the Middle East and North Africa Region, but open for the whole World Bank. The title of her talk was ‘Changing Dynamics of Oil’.
Akito Matsumoto, a Senior Economist at the International Monetary Fund was invited to discuss her presentation. Bjørnland’s research interests in commodities is very much aligned with the World Bank’s focus, and she was also invited to participate in discussions with the bank.
The talk at the seminar was based on Bjørnland’s recent research on commodity exporters, including a recent project with PhD candidate Julia Zhulanova (BI) on ‘The Shale Oil Boom and the U.S. Economy’. Here Bjørnland and Zhulanova analyze if the transmission of oil price shocks on the U.S. economy has changed with the shale oil boom. To do so, they put forward a framework that allows for spillovers between industries and learning by doing over time. In contrast to previous results, they find considerable changes in the way oil price shocks are transmitted to the U.S. economy: there are now positive spillovers to non-oil investment, employment and production from an increase in the oil price.
- Link to the working paper is here: https://static.norges-bank.no/contentassets/3a2b51bbc3cf440b9b0d2534204b3556/workingpaper14_2019.pdf?v=08/21/2019123142&ft=.pdf
Bjørnland has also done extensive research on resource rich economies, and while at the World Bank, she participated in discussions on the future for resource rich economies.