C51 - Model Construction and Estimation

• Is the Discretionary Income Effect of Oil Price Shocks a Hoax?

  Staff Working Paper 2017-50 Christiane Baumeister, Lutz Kilian, Xiaoqing Zhou

  The transmission of oil price shocks has been a question of central interest in macroeconomics since the 1970s. There has been renewed interest in this question after the large and persistent fall in the real price of oil in 2014–16. In the context of this debate, Ramey (2017) makes the striking claim that the existing literature on the transmission of oil price shocks is fundamentally confused about the question of how to quantify the effect of oil price shocks.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, International topics JEL Code(s): C, C5, C51, Q, Q4, Q43

• Global Trade Flows: Revisiting the Exchange Rate Elasticities

  Staff Working Paper 2017-41 Matthieu Bussière, Guillaume Gaulier, Walter Steingress

  This paper contributes to the debate on the magnitude of exchange rate elasticities by providing a set of price and quantity elasticities for 51 advanced and emerging-market economies. Specifically, for each of these countries we report the elasticity of trade prices and trade quantities on both the export and on the import sides, as well as the reaction of the trade balance.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Exchange rates, Inflation and prices, International topics JEL Code(s): C, C5, C51, F, F1, F14, F3, F31, F33, F4, F41

• A Dynamic Factor Model for Commodity Prices

  Staff Analytical Note 2017-12 Doga Bilgin, Reinhard Ellwanger

  In this note, we present the Commodities Factor Model (CFM), a dynamic factor model for a large cross-section of energy and non-energy commodity prices. The model decomposes price changes in commodities into a common “global” component, a “block” component confined to subgroups of economically related commodities and an idiosyncratic price shock component.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff analytical notes Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, Recent economic and financial developments JEL Code(s): C, C5, C51, Q, Q0, Q02