Examining the Asymmetric Impacts of Interest and Exchange Rate on Investment in Egypt for the Period 1976-2020: Applying NARDL Model

Abstract

Most of the studies conducted in the past decades focused on the effect of interest rates and exchange rates on domestic investment under the assumption that the independent variables have the same effect on the dependent variable, but there were limited studies that investigated the unequal effects of changes in interest rates and exchange rates, both positive and negative, on domestic investment.  This study used a nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) model to assess the unequal effects of the real interest rate and real exchange rate variables on domestic investment in Egypt for the period 1976 - 2020.  The results revealed that positive and negative shocks for both exchange rates have unequal effects on investment in the long and short term.  In addition, the stability of the nonlinear model was tested using recursive estimate tests and found to be stable.