Oil-Price Shocks and Retail Energy Prices in Canada

The effects of global energy-price shocks on retail energy prices in Canada are examined. More specifically, the author looks at the response of the consumer price indexes for gasoline, heating oil, natural gas, and electricity in Canada to movements in world crude oil prices. Using an errorcorrection framework, a quarterly forecasting model is estimated for most of these price indexes. The forecasting ability of the error-correction models is found to outperform that of competing autoregressive and random-walk models.