Q - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics
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The Role of Time-Varying Price Elasticities in Accounting for Volatility Changes in the Crude Oil Market
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. -
Portfolio Considerations in Differentiated Product Purchases: An Application to the Japanese Automobile Market
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. -
Real-Time Forecasts of the Real Price of Oil
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. -
The Role of Financial Speculation in Driving the Price of Crude Oil
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. -
Forecasting the Price of Oil
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?