CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2022
| Author | Gales, Kerim |
|---|---|
| Title | Will electric vehicles improve the developing world? An analysis of cobalt price impacts on the Democratic Republic of Congo's economy |
| Summary | As the demand of electric vehicles and lithium-ion batteries are projected to dramatically rise over the next ten years, countries with mineral deposits needed for the production of these technologies will become increasingly important in the global economy. This research has sought to evaluate the impacts of one of the most geographically concentrated and politically contentious minerals, cobalt, by using its price history on the London Metal Exchange, on the Democratic Republic of Congo’s macroeconomic indicators such as exchange rates, total reserve holdings, and central bank rates. The Democratic Republic of Congo was chosen for this analysis as it is the world’s largest cobalt producer and the largest holder of proven cobalt reserves. To complete the analysis, this research relied upon a vector autoregressive model, which was compiled with six lags, first-differenced variables, and subsequently followed by an impulse response function. The impulse response function modeled the response of differenced macroeconomic variables to a one standard deviation shock of logarithmic cobalt prices, yielding results that were both statistically insignificant and not causally related, in accordance with the Granger causality test. The results and the explanation for the findings were supported through a discussion of the local cobalt industry, the macroeconomic picture of the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the viability of vector autoregressive analysis. |
| Supervisor | Labelle, Michael |
| Department | Economics MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2022/gales_kerim.pdf |
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