Q - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics

• Commodities and Monetary Policy: Implications for Inflation and Price Level Targeting

  Staff Working Paper 2012-16 Donald Coletti, René Lalonde, Paul Masson, Dirk Muir, Stephen Snudden

  We examine the relative ability of simple inflation targeting (IT) and price level targeting (PLT) monetary policy rules to minimize both inflation variability and business cycle fluctuations in Canada for shocks that have important consequences for global commodity prices.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Economic models, Inflation and prices, International topics, Monetary policy framework JEL Code(s): E, E1, E17, E3, E31, E37, E5, E52, F, F4, F41, Q, Q4, Q43

• Growth in Emerging Market Economies and the Commodity Boom of 2003–2008: Evidence from Growth Forecast Revisions

  Staff Working Paper 2012-8 Elif Arbatli, Garima Vasishtha

  Demand for industrial raw materials from emerging economies, particularly emerging Asia, is widely believed to have fueled the surge in oil and industrial commodity prices during 2002-2008. The paper first presents a simple storage model in which commodity prices respond to market participant’s changing expectations of the future macroeconomic environment.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, International topics JEL Code(s): Q, Q4, Q41, Q43

• Time-Varying Effects of Oil Supply Shocks on the U.S. Economy

  Staff Working Paper 2012-2 Christiane Baumeister, Gert Peersman

  We use vector autoregressions with drifting coefficients and stochastic volatility to investigate how the dynamic effects of oil supply shocks on the U.S. economy have changed over time. We find a substantial decline in the short-run price elasticity of oil demand since the mid-eighties.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, International topics JEL Code(s): E, E3, E31, E32, Q, Q4, Q43

• Real-Time Analysis of Oil Price Risks Using Forecast Scenarios

  Staff Working Paper 2012-1 Christiane Baumeister, Lutz Kilian

  Recently, there has been increased interest in real-time forecasts of the real price of crude oil. Standard oil price forecasts based on reduced-form regressions or based on oil futures prices do not allow consumers of forecasts to explore how much the forecast would change relative to the baseline forecast under alternative scenarios about future oil demand and oil supply conditions.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, International topics JEL Code(s): C, C5, C53, E, E3, E32, Q, Q4, Q43

• The Role of Time-Varying Price Elasticities in Accounting for Volatility Changes in the Crude Oil Market

  Staff Working Paper 2011-28 Christiane Baumeister, Gert Peersman

  There has been a systematic increase in the volatility of the real price of crude oil since 1986, followed by a decline in the volatility of oil production since the early 1990s. We explore reasons for this evolution. We show that a likely explanation of this empirical fact is that both the short-run price elasticities of oil demand and of oil supply have declined considerably since the second half of the 1980s.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, International topics JEL Code(s): E, E3, E31, E32, Q, Q4, Q43

• Portfolio Considerations in Differentiated Product Purchases: An Application to the Japanese Automobile Market

  Staff Working Paper 2011-27 Naoki Wakamori

  Consumers often purchase more than one differentiated product, assembling a portfolio, which might potentially affect substitution patterns of demand and, as a consequence, oligopolistic firms’ pricing strategies.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Economic models, Market structure and pricing JEL Code(s): D, D4, L, L5, Q, Q5

• Real-Time Forecasts of the Real Price of Oil

  Staff Working Paper 2011-16 Christiane Baumeister, Lutz Kilian

  We construct a monthly real-time data set consisting of vintages for 1991.1-2010.12 that is suitable for generating forecasts of the real price of oil from a variety of models.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, International topics JEL Code(s): C, C5, C53, E, E3, E32, Q, Q4, Q43

• The Role of Financial Speculation in Driving the Price of Crude Oil

  Staff Discussion Paper 2011-6 Ron Alquist, Olivier Gervais

  Over the past 10 years, financial firms have increased the size of their positions in the oil futures market. At the same time, oil prices have increased dramatically.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff discussion papers Topic(s): International topics JEL Code(s): G, G1, G12, Q, Q4, Q41

• Forecasting the Price of Oil

  Staff Working Paper 2011-15 Ron Alquist, Lutz Kilian, Robert Vigfusson

  We address some of the key questions that arise in forecasting the price of crude oil. What do applied forecasters need to know about the choice of sample period and about the tradeoffs between alternative oil price series and model specifications?

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, International topics JEL Code(s): C, C5, C53, Q, Q4, Q43, Q47

• How Changes in Oil Prices Affect the Macroeconomy

  Staff Working Paper 2009-33 Brian DePratto, Carlos De Resende, Philipp Maier

  We estimate a New Keynesian general-equilibrium open economy model to examine how changes in oil prices affect the macroeconomy. Our model allows oil price changes to be transmitted through temporary demand and supply channels (affecting the output gap), as well as through persistent supply side effects (affecting trend growth).

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Economic models, Interest rates, Monetary policy transmission, Potential output, Productivity JEL Code(s): F, F4, F41, Q, Q4, Q43