On the relationship between world oil prices and GCC stock markets

We provide comprehensive evidence on the relationship between oil prices and stock mar-kets for six GCC countries. Unlike previous contributions, a wide range of modern econo-metric techniques are applied in order to: i) capture both short- and long-term interactions between considered markets; ii) deal with the potential asymmetry in such interactions and iii) control for the effects of relevant global financial variables. Empirical results show strong causal linkages in the short-run with the impact direction running usually from oil to stocks, but no long-run links. Stock returns seem also to be more sensitive to negative than to positive oil shocks