The relationship between the price of oil and the level of economic activity is a fundamental issue in macroeconomics. There is an ongoing debate in the literature about whether positive oil price shocks cause recessions in the United States (and other oil-importing countries), and although there exists a vast empirical literature that investigates the effects of oil price shocks, there are relatively few studies that investigate the direct effects of uncertainty about oil prices on the real economy. The book uses recent advances in macroeconomics and financial economics to investigate the effects of oil price shocks and uncertainty about the price of oil on the level of economic activity.

As OPEC has loosened its grip over the past ten years, the oil market has been rocked by wild price swings, the likes of which haven't been seen for eight decades. Crafting an engrossing journey from the gushing Pennsylvania oil fields of the 1860s to today's fraught and fractious Middle East, Crude Volatility explains how past periods of stability and volatility in oil prices help us understand the new boom-bust era. Oil's notorious volatility has always been considered a scourge afflicting not only the oil industry but also the broader economy and geopolitical landscape; Robert McNally makes sense of how oil became so central to our world and why it is subject to such extreme price fluctuations. Tracing a history marked by conflict, intrigue, and extreme uncertainty, McNally shows how—even from the oil industry's first years—wild and harmful price volatility prompted industry leaders and officials to undertake extraordinary efforts to stabilize oil prices by controlling production. Herculean market interventions—first, by Rockefeller's Standard Oil, then, by U.S. state regulators in partnership with major international oil companies, and, finally, by OPEC—succeeded to varying degrees in taming the beast. McNally, a veteran oil market and policy expert, explains the consequences of the ebbing of OPEC's power, debunking myths and offering recommendations—including mistakes to avoid—as we confront the unwelcome return of boom and bust oil prices.

United States monetary policy has traditionally been modeled under the assumption that the domestic economy is immune to international factors and exogenous shocks. Such an assumption is increasingly unrealistic in the age of integrated capital markets, tightened links between national economies, and reduced trading costs. International Dimensions of Monetary Policy brings together fresh research to address the repercussions of the continuing evolution toward globalization for the conduct of monetary policy. In this comprehensive book, the authors examine the real and potential effects of increased openness and exposure to international economic dynamics from a variety of perspectives. Their findings reveal that central banks continue to influence decisively domestic economic outcomes—even inflation—suggesting that international factors may have a limited role in national performance. International Dimensions of Monetary Policy will lead the way in analyzing monetary policy measures in complex economies.

The sharp drop in oil prices is one of the most important global economic developments over the past year. The SDN finds that (i) supply factors have played a somewhat larger role than demand factors in driving the oil price drop, (ii) a substantial part of the price decline is expected to persist into the medium term, although there is large uncertainty, (iii) lower oil prices will support global growth, (iv) the sharp oil price drop could still trigger financial strains, and (v) policy responses should depend on the terms-of-trade impact, fiscal and external vulnerabilities, and domestic cyclical position.

The goals of this monograph are to explain the models and techniques and make it more accessible, introduce the main strands of this literature, and explain how dynamic models can be taken to the data and estimated, providing a guide to 3 methodologies: generalized method of moments, simulated method of moments, and maximum simulated likelihood.

This paper presents a simple macroeconomic model of the oil market. The model incorporates features of oil supply such as depletion, endogenous oil exploration and extraction, as well as features of oil demand such as the secular increase in demand from emerging-market economies, usage efficiency, and endogenous demand responses. The model provides, inter alia, a useful analytical framework to explore the effects of: a change in world GDP growth; a change in the efficiency of oil usage; and a change in the supply of oil. Notwithstanding that shale oil production today is more responsive to prices than conventional oil, our analysis suggests that an era of prolonged low oil prices is likely to be followed by a period where oil prices overshoot their long-term upward trend.

The subsequent incorporation of model uncertainties into probabilistic models of basin evolution and behavior constitutes the second half of this book. Throughout, the author interweaves a discussion of scientific probability, risk, and strategy within the context of improving our ability to assess strategic hydrocarbon resources.

Energy consumption and production have major influences on the economy, environment, and society, but in return they are also influenced by how the economy is structured, how the social institutions work, and how the society deals with environmental degradation. The need for integrated assessment of the relationship between energy, economy, environment, and society is clear, and this handbook offers an in-depth review of all four pillars of the energy-economy-environment-society nexus. Bringing together contributions from all over the world, this handbook includes sections devoted to each of the four pillars. Moreover, as the financialization of commodity markets has made risk analysis more complicated and intriguing, the sections also cover energy commodity markets and their links to other financial and non-financial markets. In addition, econometric modeling and the forecasting of energy needs, as well as energy prices and volatilities, are also explored. Each part emphasizes the multidisciplinary nature of the energy economics field and from this perspective, chapters offer a review of models and methods used in the literature. The Routledge Handbook of Energy Economics will be of great interest to all those studying and researching in the area of energy economics. It offers guideline suggestions for policy makers as well as for future research.

How much does speculation contribute to oil price volatility? We revisit this contentious question by estimating a sign-restricted structural vector autoregression (SVAR). First, using a simple storage model, we show that revisions to expectations regarding oil market fundamentals and the effect of mispricing in oil derivative markets can be observationally equivalent in a SVAR model of the world oil market à la Kilian and Murphy (2013), since both imply a positive co-movement of oil prices and inventories. Second, we impose additional restrictions on the set of admissible models embodying the assumption that the impact from noise trading shocks in oil derivative markets is temporary. Our additional restrictions effectively put a bound on the contribution of speculation to short-term oil price volatility (lying between 3 and 22 percent). This estimated short-run impact is smaller than that of flow demand shocks but possibly larger than that of flow supply shocks.

The first volume of edited papers from the Tenth World Congress of the Econometric Society 2010.