This paper asymmetrically analyzes the impact of energy consumption and oil price fluctuations on the economic growth of the MENA net oil-exporting and importing nations from 1990 to 2019 using panel nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (PNARDL) model developed by (Salisu and Isah, Econ Model 66:258-271, 2017). The findings revealed that for the net-oil exporting countries, the impact of nonrenewable energy on economic growth is nonlinear in both terms, where in the both terms, high consumption of nonrenewable energy is influencing economic growth and its low consumption is limiting it. Furthermore, the impact of renewable energy is linear and it is influencing and limiting economic growth in both terms respectively. Moreover, the impact of oil price fluctuations on economic growth is linear in the long run and nonlinear in the short run, where in the long run, increase in it is not influencing economic growth but in the short run, while its decrease has no effect. For the net-oil importing countries, the impact of nonrenewable energy on economic growth is nonlinear in both terms, where in the long run, high consumption of nonrenewable energy is influencing economic growth but in the short run, it is discouraging it; however, in both terms, low consumption of nonrenewable energy has no effect. In addition, in the long run, the impact of renewable energy is nonlinear but linear in the short run; however, none of its impacts is significant in both terms. Also, the impact of oil price fluctuations on economic growth is linear in both terms and in the both terms, it is influencing economic growth. Nonetheless, for all the variables, the impacts are higher in the net-oil exporting countries. Policy recommendations were provided.
Keywords: Energy consumption; MENA countries; Oil price fluctuations; Panel nonlinear ARDL model.
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