Does the source of oil supply shock matter in explaining the behavior of U.S. consumer spending and sentiment?

Abstract

In light of the U.S. shale oil boom and given that commercial shale oil production has been mostly confined to the USA, this paper disentangles the oil supply determinant into its U.S. and non-U.S. production components, and studies their impact on U.S. real personal consumption expenditures (PCE) and on U.S. index of consumer sentiment (ICS). First, I estimate a structural VAR model to identify and study the effect of structural shocks in the crude oil market on PCE and ICS. The results show that while PCE and ICS respond negatively to oil demand shocks, they respond differently to oil supply shocks. While ICS experiences transitory negative response to both oil supply shocks, PCE shows that the response of inflation and output differs depending on whether the oil supply shock is domestic or foreign. Second, I compute the forecast-error-variance decompositions to quantify the contribution of oil supply and demand shocks to the historical fluctuations in PCE and ICS. My findings reveal that most of the variation in PCE is explained by oil supply shocks—unlike ICS where most of its variation is explained by aggregate demand shocks. Third, I conduct a historical decomposition exercise to examine the contributions of structural oil shocks in explaining historical changes in PCE and ICS. My results indicate a strong presence of U.S. oil supply shock in boosting ICS during the 2014 period of the oil price drop. Finally, the results that not all oil supply shocks are alike are robust to alternative measures of real economic activity.