This research delves into Iraq’s economic trajectory from 2000 to 2024, focusing on key indicators such as GDP growth, non-oil GDP, and the fiscal deficit. The analysis examines how factors like global oil prices, government oil revenue, public expenditure, the exchange rate, and interest rates collectively influence economic outcomes. The authors employ the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model a method recognized for its effectiveness in capturing both immediate and lagged effects among time-series variables. The ARDL bounds testing indicated a stable, long-term equilibrium relationship among these economic variables. In the long term, oil revenues, international oil prices, and fiscal policy measures emerged as dominant influences on Iraq’s economic performance. Exchange and interest rate movements, while not as headline-grabbing, still played meaningful roles in shaping macroeconomic adjustment. The short-run findings revealed that deviations from equilibrium tended to be corrected relatively swiftly, though the pace of adjustment was not uniform across all models. Model diagnostics showed no evidence of serial correlation, heteroscedasticity, or misspecification, and the residuals displayed a normal distribution, supporting the robustness of the empirical results. In conclusion, the findings reaffirm Iraq’s persistent reliance on oil as the primary engine of growth and fiscal stability, while simultaneously highlighting the country’s exposure to external shocks and policy imbalances. The results emphasize the necessity of monitoring both short-term fluctuations and longer-term trends to design sustainable economic policies in resource-dependent settings. Moving forward, diversification and sound fiscal management will be vital if Iraq aims to mitigate vulnerabilities tied to global oil market cycles.
Neama et al. (Mon,) studied this question.
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