An oil demand and supply model incorporating monetary policy

Oil price inflation may have had a significant role in pushing the world economy into its worst post-war recession during 2008–2009. Reserve currency central banks pursued an overly expansionary monetary policy during 2001–2009, in the form of low or negative real interest rates and accompanied by a rapidly falling US dollar, while paying inadequate attention to the destabilizing effects on oil markets. In this paper, we show that monetary policy variables, namely key interest rates and the US dollar exchange rate, had a powerful effect on oil markets. World oil demand was significantly influenced by interest and dollar exchange rates, while oil supply was rigid. Oil demand and supply have very low price elasticity and this characteristic makes oil prices highly volatile and subject to wider fluctuations than the prices of other commodities. Aggressive monetary policy would stimulate oil demand, however, it would be met with rigid oil supply and would turn inflationary and disruptive to economic growth if there was little excess capacity in oil output. We argue that a measure of stability in oil markets cannot be achieved unless monetary policy is restrained and real interest rates become significantly positive. Monetary tightening during 1979–1982 might imply that monetary policy has to be restrained for a long period and with high interest rates in order to bring stability back to oil markets.     

How does oil price volatility affect non-energy commodity markets?

The influence of price volatility in the crude oil market is expanding to non-energy commodity markets. With the substitution of fossil fuels by biofuel and hedge strategies against inflation induced by high oil prices, the link between crude oil market and agriculture markets and metal markets has increased. This study measures the influence of the crude oil market on non-energy commodity markets before and after the 2008 financial crisis. By introducing the US dollar index as exogenous shocks, we investigate price and volatility spillover between commodity markets by constructing a bivariate EGARCH model with time-varying correlation construction. The results reveal that the crude oil market has significant volatility spillover effects on non-energy commodity markets, which demonstrates its core position among commodity markets. The overall level of correlation strengthened after the crisis, which indicates that the consistency of market price trends was enhanced affected by economic recession. In addition, the influence of the US dollar index on commodity markets has weakened since the crisis.     

Crude oil price analysis and forecasting: A perspective of “new triangle”

In this paper, the new structural characteristics and core influencing factors of the crude oil prices are summarized based on previous representative research results. Firstly, a newly dynamic Bayesian structural time series model (DBSTS) is developed to investigate the oil prices. In particular, Google trend is introduced as an indicator to reflect the impact of search data on the oil price. Secondly, the spike and slab method is employed to select core influence factors. Finally, the Bayesian model average (BMA) is utilized to predict the oil price. Experimental results confirm that the supply and demand of global crude oil and the financial market are still the main factors affecting the oil price. Furthermore, Google trend can reflect the changes in the crude oil price to a certain extent. Moreover, the impact of shale oil production on the oil price is gradually increasing, yet remains relatively small. In addition, the DBSTS model can identify turning points in historical data (such as the 2008 financial crisis). Finally, the findings suggest the DBSTS model has good predictive capabilities in short-term prediction, making it suitable for analyzing the crude oil prices.     

The impact of oil price shocks in the Canadian economy: A structural investigation on an oil-exporting economy

Oil price shocks and monetary policy response by oil producing economies have been the subject of important theoretical investigation in the modern literature. This topic seems to be well grounded since fluctuations in the US dollar, which is affected by US monetary policy, plays an important role in exacerbating run ups and precipitous falls in world oil prices. We investigate the economic consequences of oil price shocks using an open-economy DSGE model that incorporates demand for and supply of oil while allowing for interaction between domestic and foreign monetary policy. Using Canadian and U.S. data, we quantify the relative importance of oil price shocks and monetary policy response on macroeconomic variables. We show that domestic monetary policy is a key channel that accounts for over 40% of discounted variation in domestic output across a 4-year horizon after an oil shock. In contrast, US monetary policy is of lesser importance in propagating oil price shocks on an oil-exporting economy through the international channel.     

Are the macroeconomic effects of oil price shock symmetric?: A Factor-Augmented Vector Autoregressive approach

This paper aims to examine the asymmetric effect of oil price shocks on real economic activity in the U.S. within the context of a nonlinear Factor-Augmented Vector Autoregressive (FAVAR) model. By employing simulation methods, we trace the effects of positive and negative oil price shocks on the macroeconomic variables through the Impulse Response Function (IRF). It is found that the negative impacts of higher oil prices are larger than the positive effects of lower oil prices. And the asymmetric effects are more evident when the oil price shocks are larger. The results are robust to different lag specification and choice of factors.     

Food–energy nexus in Europe: Price volatility approach

The literature on food–biofuel price volatility spillovers is growing. Published articles so far have widely ignored nonlinearities and the influence of exogenous variables on volatility patterns. This article allows for these issues when characterizing EU biodiesel industry price dynamics. While Brazilian and US ethanol markets have been thoroughly investigated, less attention has been paid to EU biodiesel markets. Pure EU biodiesel and rapeseed oil prices are the object of our research. Two different methods are applied to model these data: a parametric approach and Long et al.'s (2011) semiparametric approach. Empirical results suggest significant asymmetries in volatility spillovers between pure biodiesel and rapeseed oil prices. Rapeseed stock levels and euro/dollar exchange rates are found to play a significant role in reducing food and biofuel price volatilities.     

Dynamic correlations between oil prices and the stock prices of clean energy and technology firms: The role of reserve currency (US dollar)

There is increased interest in the dynamic relationships between the stock prices of clean energy and technology firms and oil prices in the literature. Existing works suggest a time-dependent link between them, but there is a gap of knowledge regarding the drivers of this time-dependent relationship. To contribute to this literature, we first identify dynamic conditional correlations (DCCs) between the prices of clean energy and technology stocks and oil prices to investigate the nature of these dynamic correlations. Our findings suggest the existence of significant asymmetric effects in the DCCs. Using the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model, we then investigate the impact of reserve currency (US dollar) value changes on the DCCs while also controlling for business cycles, monetary conditions, and financial stress. Our results highlight the dominant role of US dollar appreciations in driving the DCCs. This role intensifies when asymmetric impacts are taken into account. The implications of this study are important for clean energy investments and for optimal risk management strategies in the energy and financial markets.     

Oil prices and the impact of the financial crisis of 2007–2009

Oil prices increased dramatically during 2004–2006. Industry experts initially attributed these price increases to fundamental factors such as the rise in global demand, but also because of disruptions in the supply of oil. The price increases however were so substantial that additional factors are needed to explain such dramatic changes. We propose that the decline in the value of the U.S. dollar measured both by the appreciation of the Euro and of gold prices, played an important role as oil suppliers demanded compensation for the declining value of the dollar. Using a Markov switching regime methodology we find evidence that this hypothesis is true prior to the financial crisis, but its validity does not hold after the crisis when oil prices crashed and the dollar rallied.     

Oil prices and the global economy: Is it different this time around?

The recent plunge in oil prices has brought into question the generally accepted view that lower oil prices are good for the US and the global economy. In this paper, using a quarterly multi-country econometric model, we first show that a fall in oil prices lowers interest rates and inflation in most countries, and increases global real equity prices. The effects on real output are positive, although they take longer to materialize (around 4 quarters after the shock). We then re-examine the effects of low oil prices on the US economy over different sub-periods using monthly observations on real oil prices, real equity prices and real dividends. We confirm the perverse positive relationship between oil and equity prices over the period since the 2008 financial crisis highlighted in the recent literature, but show that this relationship has been unstable when considered over the longer time period of 1946–2016. In contrast, we find a stable negative relationship between oil prices and real dividends which we argue is a better proxy for economic activity (as compared to equity prices). On the supply side, the effects of lower oil prices differ widely across the different oil producers, and could be perverse initially, as some of the major oil producers try to compensate their loss of revenues by raising production. Taking demand and supply adjustments to oil price changes as a whole, we conclude that oil markets equilibrate but rather slowly, with large episodic swings between low and high oil prices.     

World oil prices,precious metal prices and macroeconomy in Turkey

We examine the long- and short-run transmissions of information between the world oil price, Turkish interest rate, Turkish lira–US dollar exchange rate, and domestic spot gold and silver price. We find that the world oil price has no predictive power of the precious metal prices, the interest rate or the exchange rate market in Turkey. The results also show that the Turkish spot precious metals, exchange rate and bond markets do not also provide information that would help improve the forecasts of world oil prices in the long run. The findings suggest that domestic gold is also considered a safe haven in Turkey during devaluation of the Turkish lira, as it is globally. It is interesting to note that there does not seem to be any significant influence of developments in the world oil markets on Turkish markets in the short run either. However, transitory positive initial impacts of innovations in oil prices on gold and silver markets are observed. The short-run price transmissions between the world oil market and the Turkish precious metal markets have implications for policy makers in emerging markets and both local and global investors in the precious metals market and the oil market.     

Exchange rate of the US dollar and the J curve: the case of oil exporting countries

This study examines the effects of changes in the exchange rate of the US dollar on the trade balances of three oil-exporting countries, namely Iran, Venezuela and Saudi Arabia. An exchange rate pass-through model is applied to allow changes in the exchange rate of the dollar to affect prices of traded goods. Then, the impact of changes in prices on the quantities of imports and exports of these economies is estimated. The results suggest a partial exchange rate pass-through to these countries’ import and export prices in terms of the US dollar. While the three countries raise the price of their primary export (namely crude oil) in response to a depreciation of the dollar, Saudi Arabia's long-run pricing strategy in securing a larger market share stands in contrast to that of the two other OPEC members. The sum of the estimated long-run price elasticities of demand for imports and exports is found to exceed unity for Iran and Venezuela, but less than unity for Saudi Arabia.     

Asymmetric effects of oil prices and exchange rates on China’s industrial prices

This paper explores the impacts of positive and negative changes in crude oil price and exchange rate variables on raw material procurement prices and product ex-factory prices of China’s industrial enterprises. We run the nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) model for the full sample from January 2000 to June 2019, and find the existence of the cointegrating relationships and the asymmetries of the long-run effects from positive and negative changes in oil price and exchange rate variables. Then, we run the OLS and quantile regressions for the two subsamples. Through the analysis of the estimates in different quantities in the latter model, we obtain rich and novel findings. The main findings include the inconsistency between the practice of oil price and exchange rate transmissions in China and the usual theoretical explanations, and the active roles of China’s oil product mechanism and exchange rate policy reforms in mitigating transmission distortions. In addition, we also find other asymmetries such as the asymmetric effects in different locations of dependent variable’s conditional distribution, and the different effects on raw material prices and product ex-factory prices from the same independent variables.     

Dynamics of oil price,precious metal prices and the exchange rate in the long-run

We examine the relationship between the oil price, prices of precious metals (gold, silver, and platinum) and the US dollar/British Pound exchange rate using parametric and non-parametric modelling over a 135-year period. For the parametric model, we employ a two-regime threshold vector error correction model (TVECM) and find non-linearity and asymmetries in the long-term relationship between the oil-gold price and oil-silver price pairs during the ‘typical regime’, in which the majority of observations lie. Non-linear Granger causality suggests evidence of bidirectional and unidirectional causality. For the non-parametric model, we employ Local Linear (LL) non-parametric regression to relax the assumptions regarding functional form. The relationship between the oil price and each of the precious metal prices and the exchange rate exhibit non-linearities. The relationship between precious metal prices and the oil price is positive and generally increasing over time, while the LL estimates for the exchange rate are negative and then positive and highly non-linear.     

Dynamic impacts of high oil prices on the bioethanol and feedstock markets

This study investigates the impacts of high international oil prices on the bioethanol and corn markets in the US. Between 2007 and 2008, the prices of major grain crops had increased sharply, reflecting the rise in international oil prices. These dual price shocks had caused substantial harm to the global economy. Employing a structural vector auto-regression model (SVAR), we analyze how increases in international oil prices could impact the prices of and demand for corn, which is used as a major bioethanol feedstock in the US. The results indicate that an increase in the oil price would increase bioethanol demand for corn and corn prices in the short run and that corn prices would stabilize in the long run as corn exports and feedstock demand for corn decline. Consequently, policies supporting biofuels should encourage the use of bioethanol co-products for feed and the development of marginal land to mitigate increases in the feedstock price.     

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.     

Are electricity prices affected by the US dollar to Euro exchange rate? The Spanish case

The objective of this paper is to investigate the relationships between Spanish electricity spot prices and the US dollar/Euro (USD/Euro) exchange rate during the period 2005–2007, taking into account the study of the association between dollar and oil prices, in order to better understand the evolution of the former over time. The first finding in this study is that Spanish electricity spots prices, the USD/Euro exchange rate and oil prices are cointegrated; therefore there is a long-run equilibrium relationship between the three variables. Short-run relationships have been detected between oil prices and Spanish electricity prices and USD/Euro exchange rate in the sense that Spanish electricity prices and USD/Euro exchange rate are affected by oil prices in the short run. There is a transmission of volatility between USD/Euro exchange rate and oil prices to Spanish electricity prices; so although Spanish electricity prices are not affected in level by the movements of USD/Euro exchange rate, they are in volatility. In this kind of scenario the conclusions confirm that for countries so dependent on external causes as Spain, one possible solution for guarantying the energy security would be the promotion of the renewable energies. Therefore we cannot ignore the impact in the internal expenses of the cost of installation and generation of green energies so there must be a balance between the increase in renewables and the reasonable market price of the electricity.     

The US dollar and the world oil market

Due to the increasing value of the dollar, world oil prices rose rather than fell relative to the price of OECD exports between 1980 and 1984. The real crude oil price of OECD countries increased by approximately 30% more than its counterpart for the USA. This paper calculates that if OECD oil prices had not risen but followed the trend for US prices, world oil demand in 1984 would have been about 3 million barrels per day — 6.6% higher than otherwise. Two plausible scenarios which assume the same nominal oil price, US inflation rate and OECD growth rate but different values for the dollar are considered. World oil consumption by 1990 could vary by 4 million barrels per day, depending upon shifts in the exchange rates and the value of the dollar. This variation is comparable to the range associated with significant differences in the economic growth rate between now and 1990. The paper shows that shifts in exchange rates could produce changes in oil prices in 1990 comparable to the effects of gradually removing 5 million barrels per day from total oil production by 1990.     

The impacts of energy prices on energy intensity: Evidence from China

In this paper, we present a review of the deregulation of energy prices in China between 1985 and 2004 and assess the impacts of changes in energy prices on aggregate energy intensity and coal/oil/electricity intensity. We used time series data to provide estimates of energy price elasticities. Empirical results showed that: (1) The own-price elasticities of coal, oil, and aggregate energy were negative in periods both before and after 1995, implying that higher relative prices of different energy types lead to the decrease in coal, oil, and aggregate energy intensities. However, the positive own-price elasticity of electricity after 1995 probably indicates that the price effect was weaker than other factors such as income effect and population effect. (2) The impacts of energy prices were asymmetric over time. (3) Sectoral adjustment also drove the decrease in aggregate energy intensity. Although raising energy prices to boost efficiency of energy use seems to be an effective policy tool, other policy implications concerned with energy prices, such as energy supply security and fuel poverty, must also be considered.     

Jump dynamics and volatility: Oil and the stock markets

Our study distinguishes itself from the prior studies within the oil and financial literature by not only examining the asymmetric effects of oil prices on stock returns, but also exploring the importance of structure changes in this dependency relationship. We retrieve daily data on S&P 500 and West Texas Intermediate (WTI) oil transactions covering the period from 1 January 1992 to 7 November 2006, and then transform the available data into daily returns. In contrast to the extant literature, in this study, consideration of expected, unexpected and negative unexpected oil price fluctuations is incorporated into the model of stock returns; we also focus on the ways in which oil price volatility, as opposed to general macroeconomic variables, can influence the stock market. We go on to implement the ARJI (Autoregressive Conditional Jump Intensity) model with structure changes, from which we conclude that high fluctuations in oil prices have asymmetric unexpected impacts on S&P 500 returns.     

高油价的回顾和反思

本世纪初的油价变化可分为三个阶段：2006年及以前的缓涨,其后到2008年中期的猛涨和2008年后期的大跌。在石油供应相对紧张的背景下,美元贬值和大量热钱投机炒作是涨价的重要动因。而在2007～2008年中期投机炒作占更重要的地位。在讨论油价时要区分即期的表观油价和以不变美元值计的实际油价。美元贬值迫使表观油价上升,通货膨胀及其他诸多因素也会使油价有“合理的”上涨。本世纪初已进入“高油价时代”的说法是不合适的．作为其“基础”之一的石油枯竭论也与发展的实际相悖。从中长期看。我们必须认识到油价复杂的周期性起伏是客观规律．应冷静应对,坚持改革发展,坚持较高的投入。在做规划和经济评价时可以将周期的均价作为“影子油价”。