Crude Oil Price & Canadian-US Exchange Rate

Factors that might affect supply and demand for the Canadian dollar on the foreign exchange market and thus influence the exchange rate are: rates of interest, rate of inflation, balance of trade and investors' confidence in a currency. This study focuses only on relationship between price of crude oil and price of the Canadian dollar against the US dollar and controls for other factors. The daily data is collected from the Natural Resources Canada. Sample period ranges from January 2000 to July 2009. Generalised Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity (GARCH) and Exponential GARCH (EGARCH) models are used. The study finds a positive and robust relation between the observed variables. More precisely, a 10% change in oil price leads to about 0.32% increase in the Canadian-US exchange rate.