Inquiring asymmetric effects of oil prices, money supply, and domestic debt on consumer prices: an empirical evidence from Pakistan

Oil prices (OP) may play a significant role in determining inflation in any oil-importing economy and could have an asymmetrical effect as well. Thus, this paper aims to explore the asymmetric influence of OP, broad money supply (BMS), and domestic debt (DD) on the Consumer Price Index (CPI) in the oil-importing economy of Pakistan using the nonlinear autoregressive distributive lag (NARDL) methodology on an annual sample from 1980 to 2021. The long-run results show that increasing OP and BMS have a positive effect on CPI. Similarly, decreasing OP and BMS have a positive effect on CPI. So, increasing OP and BMS is raising price levels, and decreasing OP and BMS is reducing price levels. OP has a positive and symmetrical effect on CPI. However, the BMS has a positive but asymmetrical effect on CPI. Furthermore, the effect of decreasing BMS is found greater than increasing BMS. Moreover, the effect of DD on CPI is also found asymmetrical. The increasing DD has a positive effect, and decreasing DD has a negative effect on CPI. The most of short-run results follow the long-run results. However, energy usage shows a negative effect on CPI in the short run, which is insignificant in the long-run results. This study recommends controlling the money supply and oil prices to reduce consumer prices.