Dynamic relationships between oil revenue, government spending and economic growth in Oman

This paper investigates the short-run and long-run relationships between three main macroeconomic variables in Oman using the Johansen multivariate co-integration techniques as well as the stationary VAR for the period between 1971 and 2013. The results indicate that there is a long-run relationship between these three macroeconomic variables; the real GDP, the real government expenditure and the real oil revenues. The estimated coefficients for the real oil revenues and the real government expenditure are correctly signed and statistically significant at 5% level. Both variables depict positive relationship with GDP which are 0.672 and 0.872 respectively. The impulse response functions and the variance decomposition from the stationary VAR show that these variables are very important to the short-run dynamics of the Omani economy. Overall, government expenditure appears to be the main source for economic growth in long-run, and in short run variations in government expenditure are generally derived by oil revenue shocks. Therefore, the volatility in oil revenue requires public expenditure management reforms and the need to diversify income sources in order to enhance economic stability and growth.