This paper explores the effect of news shocks on the current account and other macroeconomic variables using worldwide giant oil discoveries as a directly observable measure of news shocks about future output ? the delay between a discovery and production is on average 4 to 6 years. We first present a two-sector small open economy model in order to predict the responses of macroeconomic aggregates to news of an oil discovery. We then estimate the effects of giant oil discoveries on a large panel of countries. Our empirical estimates are consistent with the predictions of the model. After an oil discovery, the current account and saving rate decline for the first 5 years and then rise sharply during the ensuing years. Investment rises robustly soon after the news arrives, while GDP does not increase until after 5 years. Employment rates fall slightly for a sustained period of time.

The Oil Trading Manual (OTM) provides a unique and comprehensive reference source to the latest developments in the structure and conduct of the international oil markets including: - Physical characteristics and refining - Oil pricing arrangements - Physical oil markets - Forward and futures contracts - Options and swaps - Operations and logistics - Accounting and taxation - Controlling financial risk - Legal and regulatory controlOTM provides a unique and comprehensive reference source to the structure and conduct of the international oil markets. The manual covers all the major oil trading instruments and their applications; the trading centres, contracts, uses and users of both the physical and the terminal oil markets, and their administrative, management, tax, and accounting implications. It also includes vital information on changes to the international legal and regulatory structures. The manual is divided into three complementary parts; Characteristics An introduction to oil and oil trading, and includes material on the nature of oil as a commodity, refinery processes and the different ways in which oil is priced. Instruments and markets Deals with the oil market itself taking each segment in turn, explaining how the various trading instruments work and describing the markets that have evolved to trade them. It starts with the physical oil markets, moving on to forward and futures markets, followed by options and swaps. Administration Covers the essential 'back-room' activities without which oil trading could not continue. It includes practical material on operations and logistics, credit control, accounting, taxation, contracts and regulation, and controlling financial risk, providing a unique guide to the subject. Compiled from the contributions of a range of internationally respected professionals, it is the indispensable practical companion for all those involved with trading in this complex commodity. Revised and updated 2003

This vivid account of the rise of the remarkable slave and palm oil trading states in the Niger delta in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries also analyses the relation of political development to economic change. The author's field studies among the Ijo, Ibibio, and Ibo peoples have made possible an analysis of the essential processes of economic and political transformation which lay behind the oral traditions. There are also detailed and often lively accounts of the European traders. The study concentrates on the two principal Oil Rivers states which nineteenth century writers called New Calabar and Grand Bonny. For purposes of comparison the adjacent states of Brass (Nem?) and Okrika, the Andoni peoples and the Efik state known to Europeans as Old Calabar are also examined. The study ends in 1884, the year that marks the beginning of the Brithsh Protectorate government and with it the end of indigenous systems of government which characterised these Oil River States during the nineteenth century. The monarchies established in the eighteenth century by King Pepple of Bonny and King Armakiri of Kalabari and the political and economic organisations developed under their rule were coming to, or had already come to, an end, with new oligarchies developing in their place.