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

• Low for Longer? Why the Global Oil Market in 2014 Is Not Like 1986

  Staff Analytical Note 2016-11 Bahattin Buyuksahin, Reinhard Ellwanger, Kun Mo, Konrad Zmitrowicz

  In the second half of 2014, oil prices experienced a sharp decline, falling more than 50 per cent between June 2014 and January 2015. A cursory glance at this oil price crash suggests similarities to developments in 1986, when the price of oil declined by more than 50 per cent, initiating an episode of relatively low oil prices that lasted for more than a decade.

  Content Type(s): Staff Research, Staff Analytical Notes Topic(s): International topics, Recent economic and financial developments JEL Code(s): E, E3, Q, Q4, Q41, Q43

• Crude Oil Prices and Fixed-Asset Cash Spending in the Oil and Gas Industry: Findings from VAR Models

  Staff Analytical Note 2016-8 Farrukh Suvankulov

  This note investigates the relationship between crude oil prices and investment in the energy sector. We employ a set of vector autoregression (VAR) models (unconstrained VAR, vector error-correction and Bayesian VAR) to formalize the relationship between the West Texas Intermediate (WTI) benchmark and fixed-asset cash spending in the oil and gas extraction and support activities sector of the Canadian economy.

  Content Type(s): Staff Research, Staff Analytical Notes Topic(s): Domestic demand and components, Econometric and statistical methods JEL Code(s): E, E2, E22, E27, Q, Q4, Q43, Q47

• A General Approach to Recovering Market Expectations from Futures Prices with an Application to Crude Oil

  Staff Working Paper 2016-18 Christiane Baumeister, Lutz Kilian

  Futures markets are a potentially valuable source of information about price expectations. Exploiting this information has proved difficult in practice, because time-varying risk premia often render the futures price a poor measure of the market expectation of the price of the underlying asset.

  Content Type(s): Staff Research, Staff Working Papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, International topics JEL Code(s): C, C5, C53, D, D8, D84, G, G1, G14, Q, Q4, Q43

• The Evolution of the Chinese Housing Market and Its Impact on Base Metal Prices

  Staff Discussion Paper 2016-7 Mark Kruger, Kun Mo, Benjamin Sawatzky

  The Chinese housing market has grown rapidly following its liberalization in the 1990s, generating significant economic activity and demand for base metals. In this paper, we discuss the evolution of the Chinese housing market and quantify its importance for the overall Chinese economy and its linkages to base metal prices.

  Content Type(s): Staff Research, Staff Discussion Papers Topic(s): International topics JEL Code(s): Q, Q3, Q31, R, R3, R31

• The Complex Adjustment of the Canadian Economy to Lower Commodity Prices

  Staff Analytical Note 2016-1 Julien Champagne, Nikita Perevalov, Hope Pioro, Dany Brouillette, Andrew Agopsowicz

  In this analytical note, we provide a comprehensive assessment of the complex structural adjustment facing the Canadian economy following the commodity price decline since mid-2014. We quantify separately the impacts coming from the commodity sector restructuring and the broader effect of significantly lower terms of trade.

  Content Type(s): Staff Research, Staff Analytical Notes Topic(s): Business fluctuations and cycles, Exchange rates, Labour markets, Potential output, Recent economic and financial developments JEL Code(s): E, E1, E17, E2, E27, E5, E52, J, J2, Q, Q0, Q00

• Revisiting the Macroeconomic Impact of Oil Shocks in Asian Economies

  Staff Working Paper 2015-23 Juncal Cunado, Soojin Jo, Fernando Perez de Gracia

  This paper analyzes the macroeconomic impact of oil shocks in four of the largest oil-consuming Asian economies, using a structural vector autoregressive model. We identify three different types of oil shocks via sign restrictions: an oil supply shock, an oil demand shock driven by global economic activity and an oil-specific demand shock.

  Content Type(s): Staff Research, Staff Working Papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, International topics JEL Code(s): E, E3, E32, O, O5, O53, Q, Q4, Q43

• Large-Scale Asset Purchases: Impact on Commodity Prices and International Spillover Effects

  Staff Working Paper 2015-21 Sharon Kozicki, Eric Santor, Lena Suchanek

  Prices of commodities, including metals, energy and agricultural products, rose markedly over the 2009–2010 period. Some observers have attributed a significant part of this increase in commodity prices to the U.S. Federal Reserve’s large-scale asset purchase (LSAP) programs.

  Content Type(s): Staff Working Papers Topic(s): International topics JEL Code(s): E, E5, E58, G, G1, G14, Q, Q0, Q00

• Are There Gains from Pooling Real-Time Oil Price Forecasts?

  Staff Working Paper 2014-46 Christiane Baumeister, Lutz Kilian, Thomas K. Lee

  The answer as to whether there are gains from pooling real-time oil price forecasts depends on the objective. The approach of combining five of the leading forecasting models with equal weights dominates the strategy of selecting one model and using it for all horizons up to two years.

  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

• What Does the Convenience Yield Curve Tell Us about the Crude Oil Market?

  Staff Working Paper 2014-42 Ron Alquist, Gregory Bauer, Antonio Diez de los Rios

  Using the prices of crude oil futures contracts, we construct the term structure of crude oil convenience yields out to one-year maturity. The crude oil convenience yield can be interpreted as the interest rate, denominated in barrels of oil, for borrowing a single barrel of oil, and it measures the value of storing crude oil over the borrowing period.

  Content Type(s): Staff Research, Staff Working Papers Topic(s): Asset Pricing, International topics JEL Code(s): C, C5, C53, G, G1, G12, G13, Q, Q4, Q43

• 13 May 2014 The Art and Science of Forecasting the Real Price of Oil

  Bank of Canada Review - Spring 2014 Christiane Baumeister

  Forecasts of the price of crude oil play a significant role in the conduct of monetary policy, especially for commodity producers such as Canada. This article presents a range of recently developed forecasting models that, when pooled together, can generate, on average, more accurate forecasts of the price of oil than the oil futures curve. It also illustrates how policy-makers can evaluate the risks associated with the baseline oil price forecast and how they can determine the causes of past oil price fluctuations.

  Content Type(s): Publications, Bank of Canada Review Article Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, International topics JEL Code(s): C, C5, C53, E, E3, E32, Q, Q4, Q43