Assessing the impact of US ethanol on fossil fuel markets: A structural VAR approach

Despite the growing importance of biofuels, the effect of biofuels on fossil fuel markets is not fully understood. We develop a joint structural Vector Auto Regression (VAR) model of the global crude oil, US gasoline, and US ethanol markets to examine whether the US ethanol market has had any impact on global oil markets. The structural VAR approach provides a unique method for decomposing price and quantity data into demand and supply shocks, allowing us to estimate the distinct dynamic effects of ethanol demand and supply shocks on the real prices of crude oil and US gasoline. Ethanol demand in the US is driven mainly by government support in the form of tax credits and blending mandates. Shocks to ethanol demand therefore reflect changes in policy more than any other factor. In contrast, ethanol supply shocks are driven by changes in feedstock prices. A principle finding is that a policy-driven ethanol demand expansion causes a statistically significant decline in real crude oil prices, while an ethanol supply expansion does not have a statistically significant impact on real oil prices. This suggests that even though US ethanol market is small, the influence of US biofuels policy on the crude oil market is pervasive. We also show that ethanol demand shocks are more important than ethanol supply shocks in explaining the fluctuation of real prices of crude oil and US gasoline.     

Does the source of oil price shocks matter for South African stock returns? A structural VAR approach

In this paper, we investigate the dynamic relationship between different oil price shocks and the South African stock market using a sign restriction structural VAR approach for the period 1973:01 to 2011:07. The results show that for an oil-importing country like South Africa, stock returns only increase with oil prices when global economic activity improves. In response to oil supply shocks and speculative demand shocks, stock returns and the real price of oil move in opposite directions. The analysis of the variance decomposition shows that the oil supply shock contributes more to the variability in real stock prices. The main conclusion is that different oil price shocks affect stock returns differently and policy makers and investors should always consider the source of the shock before implementing a policy and making investment decisions.     

Recent drivers of the real oil price: Revisiting and extending Kilian's (2009) findings

We replicate and update the results of Kilian (2009) to include the period since the financial crisis. We separate the drivers of the price of crude oil shocks into three components: oil supply shocks, aggregate demand shocks and oil-market specific demand shocks. We provide evidence that the run-up of oil prices in 2008 was mostly driven by aggregate demand shocks and to a lesser extend by oil-market specific demand shocks, complementing similar analyses in Baumeister and Kilian (2016a) and Kilian (2017). Our results confirm that the cumulative effect of aggregate demand disruptions on the price of crude oil started before 2007. Furthermore, aggregate demand shocks and oil-market specific demand shocks rather than oil supply shocks have the most significant effects on U.S. output and prices. The findings are robust to an alternative measure of global real economic activity.     

The impact of oil shocks on exchange rates: A Markov-switching approach

This paper uses Markov-switching models to investigate the impact of oil shocks on real exchange rates for a sample of oil exporting and oil importing countries. This is an important topic to study because an oil shock can affect a country's terms of trade which can affect its competitiveness. We detect significant exchange rate appreciation pressures in oil exporting economies after oil demand shocks. We find limited evidence that oil supply shocks affect exchange rates. Global economic demand shocks affect exchange rates in both oil exporting and importing countries, though there is no systematic pattern of appreciating and depreciating real exchange rates. The results lend support to the presence of regime switching for the effects of oil shocks on real exchange rates.     

Which oil shocks really matter in equity markets?

This paper examines the relationship between structural oil shocks and US equity markets. The recent oil shock decomposition of Ready (2018) is reconsidered and refined, providing a clearer delineation between shocks to equity market discount rates and aggregate demand, leading to an oil shock specification which attributes substantially more explanatory power to the latter in explaining equity market variation. Providing links with the literature dating back to Kilian and Park (2009), an explicit role is given to precautionary demand shocks using an independent measure constructed from oil futures data, reducing the role of the supply shocks obtained as the final residual in the recursive identification scheme. In an extended sample that allows an analysis of the oil/equity market relationship since the global financial crisis, the modified aggregate demand shocks have approximately twice as much explanatory power for stock return variation than the demand shocks of Ready (2018). The importance of these shocks in driving oil price changes and equity market volatility has only increased since the financial crisis, with the role of supply shocks diminishing. Once these demand effects are accounted for, there is little relationship between precautionary demand shocks and equity returns, in contrast to the existing literature.     

How do oil price shocks affect the output volatility of the U.S. energy mining industry? The roles of structural oil price shocks

This paper focuses on how explicit structural shocks that characterize the endogenous character of international oil price change affect the output volatility of the U.S. crude oil and natural gas mining industries. To this end, we employ a modified structural vector autoregressive model (SVAR) to decompose real oil-price changes into four components: U.S. supply shocks, non-U.S. supply shocks, aggregate demand shocks, and oil-specific demand shocks mainly driven by precautionary demand. The results indicate that output volatility of the U.S. crude oil and natural gas mining industry has significantly negative responses to U.S. supply shocks, aggregate demand shocks, and oil-specific demand shocks, while lacks significant response to non-U.S. supply shocks. Variance decomposition and historical decomposition confirm that U.S. supply shocks occupy most explaining variations in output volatility among the four structural oil shocks. Moreover, the oil-specific demand shocks explain more variation than that of aggregate demand shocks for the crude oil mining industry, but the opposite is true for the natural gas mining industry.     

Oil price shocks,global financial markets and their connectedness

This paper extends the literature on the relationship between oil price shocks and financial markets by examining the effect of oil shocks on the sovereign bond markets of a large number of advanced and emerging economies and exploring the impact of oil shocks on the degree of connectedness among international financial markets. We show that the effect of oil price shocks is not only limited to stock market returns, but also extends to bond markets, even after controlling for discount rate shocks as well as aggregate capital market effects. Unlike the case for stock markets, the effect on sovereign bonds is found to be rather heterogeneous (in terms of size and sign) and primarily driven by demand related shocks. We also show that oil price shocks serve as a driver of connectedness patterns across global financial markets, although the effect on connectedness depends on the nature of the oil market shock and the economic characteristics of the countries. Overall, the findings highlight the role of crude oil as a driver of not only of return dynamics in global stock and bond markets, but also of global financial connectedness patterns.     

The relationship between global oil price shocks and China's output: A time-varying analysis

We employ a class of time-varying Bayesian vector autoregressive (VAR) models on new standard dataset of China's GDP constructed by Chang et al. (2015) to examine the relationship between China's economic growth and global oil market fluctuations between 1992Q1 and 2015Q3. We find that: (1) the time varying parameter VAR with stochastic volatility provides a better fit as compared to it's constant counterparts; (2) the impacts of intertemporal global oil price shocks on China's output are often small and temporary in nature; (3) oil supply and specific oil demand shocks generally produce negative movements in China's GDP growth whilst oil demand shocks tend to have positive effects; (4) domestic output shocks have no significant impact on price or quantity movements within the global oil market. The results are generally robust to three commonly employed indicators of global economic activity: Kilian's global real economic activity index, the metal price index and the global industrial production index, and two alternative oil price metrics: the US refiners' acquisition cost for imported crude oil and the West Texas Intermediate price of crude oil.     

The effects of oil price shocks on output and inflation in China

Crude oil price shocks derive from many sources, each of which may bring about different effects on macro-economy variables and require completely different designs in macro-economic policy; thus, distinguishing the sources of oil price fluctuations is crucial when evaluating these effects. This paper establishes an open-economy dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model with two economies: China and the rest of the world. To assess the effects of oil price shocks, the CES production function is extended by adding oil as an input. Based on the model, the effects of four types of oil price fluctuations are evaluated. The four types of oil price shocks are supply shocks driven by political events in OPEC countries, other oil supply shocks, aggregate shocks to the demand for industrial commodities, and demand shocks that are specific to the crude oil market. Simulation results indicate the following: Oil supply shocks driven by political events mainly produce short-term effects on China's output and inflation, while the other three shocks produce relatively long-term effects; in addition, demand shocks that are specific to the crude oil market contribute the most to the fluctuations in China's output and inflation.     

The impacts of structural oil shocks on macroeconomic uncertainty: Evidence from a large panel of 45 countries

Using local projection methods, this paper employs monthly panel data from 1989 to 2017 to examine both linear and nonlinear impulse responses of macroeconomic uncertainty to structural shocks to global oil production, aggregate demand, oil-market-specific demand and speculative demand in a large group of 45 economies. We find that both oil supply and demand shocks are important drivers of uncertainty. There is strong evidence that the impacts of oil price shocks on macroeconomic uncertainty are regime-dependent and contingent on the states of investor sentiments and perceived volatility in financial markets. The responses of economic uncertainty to oil shocks, especially demand-side shocks, appear to experience a dramatic change in the post-Global Financial Crisis period.     

Dynamic connectedness of oil price shocks and exchange rates

Using a novel method of isolating the oil price shocks, we study how different sources of oil price shocks are connected to exchange rates of major oil-dependent countries using daily data from March 1996 to February 2019. We find that oil price shocks resulting from changes in demand and risk significantly contribute to variation in exchange rates, while supply shocks have virtually no impact. The connectedness of this relationship between oil price shocks and exchange rates has significantly increased after the global financial crisis. We also find that oil price shocks do not explain the variation in exchange rate volatility but we document significant volatility connectedness among exchange rates. Our findings have important implications for policy makers and financial market participants.     

Oil price shocks and policy uncertainty: New evidence on the effects of US and non-US oil production

Important interaction has been established for US economic policy uncertainty with a number of economic and financial variables including oil prices. This paper examines the dynamic effects of US and non-US oil production shocks on economic policy uncertainty using a structural VAR model. Such an examination is motivated by the substantial increases in US oil production in recent years with implications for US political and economic security. Positive innovations in US oil production are associated with decreases in US economic policy uncertainty. The economic forecast interquartile ranges about the US CPI and about federal/state/local government expenditures are particularly sensitive to innovations in US oil supply shocks. Shocks to US oil supply disruption causes rises in the CPI forecast uncertainty and accounts for 21% of the overall variation of the CPI forecaster disagreement. Dis-aggregation of oil production shocks into US and non-US oil production yields novel results. Oil supply shocks identified by US and non-US origins explain as much of the variation in economic policy uncertainty as structural shocks on the demand side of the oil market.     

Country-specific oil supply shocks and the global economy: A counterfactual analysis

This paper investigates the global macroeconomic consequences of country-specific oil-supply shocks. Our contribution is both theoretical and empirical. On the theoretical side, we develop a model for the global oil market and integrate this within a compact quarterly model of the global economy to illustrate how our multi-country approach to modeling oil markets can be used to identify country-specific oil-supply shocks. On the empirical side, estimating the GVAR-Oil model for 27 countries/regions over the period 1979Q2 to 2013Q1, we show that the global economic implications of oil-supply shocks (due to, for instance, sanctions, wars, or natural disasters) vary considerably depending on which country is subject to the shock. In particular, we find that adverse shocks to Iranian oil output are neutralized in terms of their effects on the global economy (real outputs and financial markets) mainly due to an increase in Saudi Arabian oil production. In contrast, a negative shock to oil supply in Saudi Arabia leads to an immediate and permanent increase in oil prices, given that the loss in Saudi Arabian production is not compensated for by the other oil producers. As a result, a Saudi Arabian oil supply shock has significant adverse effects for the global economy with real GDP falling in both advanced and emerging economies, and large losses in real equity prices worldwide.     

Monopoly power in the oil market and the macroeconomy

This paper studies the macroeconomic consequences of oil price shocks caused by innovations in the monopoly power in the oil market. Monopoly power is interpreted as oil producers' ability to charge a markup over marginal costs. We propose a novel way to identify markup shocks based on meetings of the OPEC and show their unique macroeconomic consequences compared to supply and demand shocks. In particular, global real economic activity expands when oil producers' monopoly power rises. A general equilibrium model suggests that higher monopoly profits attract investments in oil producing capital which drive down marginal costs and stimulate economic growth.     

Historical energy price shocks and their changing effects on the economy

The purpose of this paper is to identify the changes in the impact of energy shocks on economic activity — with an interest in assessing if an economy's vulnerability and resilience to shocks improved with economic development. Using data on the United Kingdom over the last three hundred years, the paper identifies supply, aggregate demand and residual shocks to energy prices and estimates their changing influence on energy prices and GDP. The results suggest that the impacts of supply shocks rose with its increasing dependence on coal, and declined with its partial transition to oil. However, the transition from exporting coal to importing oil increased the negative impacts of demand shocks. More generally, the results indicate that improvements in vulnerability and resilience to shocks did not progress systematically as the economy developed. Instead, the changes in impacts depended greatly on the circumstances related to the demand for and supply of energy sources. If these experiences are transferable to future markets, a transition to a diversified mix of renewable energy is likely to reduce vulnerability and increase resilience to energy price shocks.     

Do exchange rates respond asymmetrically to shocks in the crude oil market?

The paper argues that exchange rates respond asymmetrically to different shocks to the crude oil market. We apply Kilian's (2009) methodology to disentangle shocks to the crude oil market into distinct demand and supply shocks, and examine the response of the U.S. real and nominal trade-weighted U.S. dollar exchange rate indexes, as well as six other bilateral exchange rates to these shocks. Our analysis indicates that oil supply shocks have no significant effects on exchange rates, while global aggregate demand and oil-specific demand shocks lead to depreciations. We further show that exchange rates respond asymmetrically to shocks in the crude market depending on whether the shocks are large versus small, or positive versus negative.     

Oil price shocks and China's economy: Reactions of the monetary policy to oil price shocks

The paper empirically analyzes the effect of positive oil price shocks on China's economy, having special interest in the response of the Chinese interest rate to those shocks. Using different econometric models, i) a time-varying parameter structural vector autoregression (TVP SVAR) model with short-run identifying restrictions, ii) a structural VAR (SVAR) model with the short-run identifying restrictions, and iii) a VAR model with ordering-free generalized impulse response VAR (GIR VAR), we find that the response of the Chinese interest rate to the oil price shocks is not only time-varying but also showing quite different signs of responses. Specifically, in the earlier sample period (1992:4–2001:10), the interest rate shows a negative response to the oil price shock, while in the latter period (2001:11–2014:5) it shows a positive response to the shock. Given the negative response of the world oil production to an oil price shock in the earlier period, the shock is identified as a negative supply shock or a precautionary demand shock as suggested by Kilian (2009), thereby the negative response of the interest rate to the oil price shock is deemed as economy-boosting. The positive response of the interest rate to the oil price shock in the later period, given that this shock is identified as a positive world oil demand shock, gives evidence that stabilization of inflation is one of the main objectives of China's monetary authority, even though the current main objective of the monetary policy is characterized as “maintaining the stability of the value of the currency and thereby promoting economic growth.” Finally, the variance decomposition results reveal that the oil price shock becomes an increasingly important source in the volatility of China's interest rate.     

Analysis of real oil prices via trend-cycle decomposition

The recent fluctuations in the oil prices have intensified the discussion on the dynamics and causes of real oil price changes. While the long-run component of real oil prices seems to have a stochastic trend, global real economic activity has been thought to generate important changes in real oil prices. Based on this argument, in this paper, we analyze the real oil prices within a trend-cycle decomposition framework, where we impose a stochastic trend and assume the cyclical term to be affected by global economic conditions. We also let the parameters vary over time to see whether shocks to trend and the cycle have changing effects on the real oil prices. As a result, we find that shocks to trend are more persistent recently. In that sense, this paper contributes to the literature by offering an explanation for the increased volatility in oil prices. In addition, we show that global economic activity contributed also to the previous oil price shocks, which were regarded mainly as supply-side driven.     

How does the U.S. natural gas market react to demand and supply shocks in the crude oil market?

In this paper we use monthly data (over the period from January 1976 to December 2012) and a structural VAR model to disentangle demand and supply shocks in the global crude oil market and investigate their effects on the real price of natural gas in the United States. We identify the model by assuming that innovations to the real price of crude oil are predetermined with respect to the natural gas market and show that close to 45% of the variation in the real price of natural gas can be attributed to structural supply and demand shocks in the global crude oil market.     

Oil price shocks and agricultural commodity prices

While the impacts of oil price changes on agricultural commodity markets are of great interest to economists, previous studies do not differentiate oil-specific shocks from aggregate demand shocks. In this paper, we address this issue using a structural VAR analysis. Our findings indicate that the responses of agricultural commodity prices to oil price changes depend greatly on whether they are caused oil supply shocks, aggregate demand shocks or other oil-specific shocks mainly driven by precautionary demand. Oil shocks can explain a minor friction of agricultural commodity price variations before the food crisis in 2006–2008, whereas in post-crisis period their explanatory abilities become much higher. After crisis, the contributions of oil-specific factors to variations in agricultural commodity prices are greater than those of aggregate demand shocks. The results from an alternative SVAR confirm the robustness of our main findings.