Q43 - Energy and the Macroeconomy

• Do High-Frequency Financial Data Help Forecast Oil Prices? The MIDAS Touch at Work

  Staff Working Paper 2014-11 Christiane Baumeister, Pierre Guérin, Lutz Kilian

  The substantial variation in the real price of oil since 2003 has renewed interest in the question of how to forecast monthly and quarterly oil prices. There also has been increased interest in the link between financial markets and oil markets, including the question of whether financial market information helps forecast the real price of oil in physical markets.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, International topics JEL Code(s): C, C5, C53, G, G1, G14, Q, Q4, Q43

• Do Oil Price Increases Cause Higher Food Prices?

  Staff Working Paper 2013-52 Christiane Baumeister, Lutz Kilian

  U.S. retail food price increases in recent years may seem large in nominal terms, but after adjusting for inflation have been quite modest even after the change in U.S. biofuel policies in 2006. In contrast, increases in the real prices of corn, soybeans, wheat and rice received by U.S. farmers have been more substantial and can be linked in part to increases in the real price of oil.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Inflation and prices, International topics JEL Code(s): E, E3, E31, Q, Q1, Q11, Q4, Q42, Q43

• Forecasting the Real Price of Oil in a Changing World: A Forecast Combination Approach

  Staff Working Paper 2013-28 Christiane Baumeister, Lutz Kilian

  The U.S. Energy Information Administration regularly publishes short-term forecasts of the price of crude oil.

  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

• Are Product Spreads Useful for Forecasting? An Empirical Evaluation of the Verleger Hypothesis

  Staff Working Paper 2013-25 Christiane Baumeister, Lutz Kilian, Xiaoqing Zhou

  Notwithstanding a resurgence in research on out-of-sample forecasts of the price of oil in recent years, there is one important approach to forecasting the real price of oil which has not been studied systematically to date.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, International topics JEL Code(s): C, C5, C53, G, G1, G15, Q, Q4, Q43

• A Blessing in Disguise: The Implications of High Global Oil Prices for the North American Market

  Staff Working Paper 2013-23 Ron Alquist, Justin-Damien Guénette

  We examine the implications of increased unconventional crude oil production in North America. This production increase has been made possible by the existence of alternative oil-recovery technologies and persistently elevated oil prices that make these technologies commercially viable.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): International topics, Recent economic and financial developments JEL Code(s): Q, Q4, Q41, Q43, Q47

• What Central Bankers Need to Know about Forecasting Oil Prices

  Staff Working Paper 2013-15 Christiane Baumeister, Lutz Kilian

  Forecasts of the quarterly real price of oil are routinely used by international organizations and central banks worldwide in assessing the global and domestic economic outlook, yet little is known about how best to generate such forecasts. Our analysis breaks new ground in several dimensions.

  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 Effects of Oil Price Uncertainty on the Macroeconomy

  Staff Working Paper 2012-40 Soojin Jo

  This paper investigates the effect of oil price uncertainty on real economic activity using a quarterly VAR with stochastic volatility in mean. Stochastic volatility allows oil price uncertainty to vary separately from changes in the level of oil prices, and thus the impact of oil price uncertainty can be examined in a more flexible yet tractable way.

  Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Econometric and statistical methods JEL Code(s): C, C3, C32, E, E3, E32, Q, Q4, Q43

• 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