Possession and production of oil reserves affects the host country’s current account. Throughout the history of the North Sea oil, Norway ran persistent current account surpluses and accumulated public “oil funds.” The other major producer, the United Kingdom did not establish an oil fund. This work models how oil discoveries impact the current account. A small open economy DSGE model with an oil sector expresses the current account as a function of oil discoveries. In this model, an oil discovery creates a long-term borrowing-repayment-saving cycle. Some of the characteristics of the economy that affect oil-related decisions include: the presence of an oil fund, the equity home bias, and the technology of the oil industry. These characteristics are estimated structurally using the North Sea data for Norway and the United Kingdom. The estimation suggests that, upon discovering oil in the North Sea, the populations of Norway and the United Kingdom made similar economic choices but under different circumstances: Norway’s export revenues were amplified by a period of high oil prices in the 2000s, whereas the UK largely balanced its oil trade and did not benefit from the oil price. Similar decisions made under different circumstances led to remarkably different effects of oil discoveries on the current accounts.

拥有和生产石油储备会影响东道国的经常账户。在北海石油的整个历史中，挪威一直存在经常账户盈余并积累了公共“石油资金”。另一个主要生产国英国没有建立石油基金。这项工作模拟了石油发现如何影响经常账户。带有石油部门的小型开放经济DSGE模型将经常账户表示为石油发现的函数。在这种模型中，石油发现创造了长期的借贷还款节省周期。影响石油相关决策的经济特征包括：石油基金的存在，房屋净值偏向以及石油工业的技术。这些特征是使用挪威和英国的北海数据从结构上估算的。估计表明，在北海发现石油后，挪威和英国的人口做出了相似的经济选择，但情况却不同：在2000年代的高油价时期，挪威的出口收入得到了放大，而英国在很大程度上平衡了石油贸易，没有从石油价格中受益。在不同情况下做出的类似决定导致石油发现对经常项目的影响显着不同。