Un article de Livingstone S. Geoffroy Boko et Sylvain Dessy accepté dans la revue Energy Economics

16 septembre 2026

L’article "Shock Amplification and Delayed Recovery in Resource Economies: The Role of Fiscal Policy Reform", écrit par Livingstone S. Geoffroy Boko , étudiant au doctorat et coécrit avec Sylvain Dessy (directeur de recherche), vient d’être accepté pour publication dans la revue Energy Economics (Impact factor 13.5; Cite score 21.8).

Abstract

This paper examines how global commodity price shocks propagate through resource-dependent economies, with a focus on the interaction between extraction costs and domestic policy responses. We develop a simple framework in which high-cost producers are more exposed to negative price shocks, but the persistence of their response depends on investment conditions and policy environments. We test these predictions using the 2014-2016 oil price collapse, comparing Alberta—one of the world’s highest-cost oil producers—to a synthetic control constructed from lower-cost jurisdictions. Alberta experienced significantly larger declines in hydrocarbon output, investment, and per capita GDP, along with a more prolonged recovery. However, placebo analyses for other high-cost jurisdictions reveal no comparable declines, indicating that cost structure alone is insufficient to explain the observed contraction. Exploiting within-province variation, we further show that Alberta’s response to the 2015 shock differs markedly from its response to the 2009 collapse, despite an unchanged cost structure. Event-study estimates indicate that the post-2015 decline is closely associated with contemporaneous fiscal policy changes. While policy responses may be endogenous, the combined evidence points to a transmission mechanism in which domestic policy shapes—and potentially amplifies—the effects of external shocks in high-cost environments.

Keywords: Cost heterogeneity, Fiscal policy, Shock transmission, Synthetic Control Method, Resource dependence

JEL codes: H71; E32; Q35; O13; C23.