Dynamic effects of rising oil prices on consumer energy prices in Canada and the United States: Evidence from the last half a century

Abstract

This paper examines the dynamic relationship between the price of crude oil and the CPI energy price sub-index in Canada and the U.S. using a Markov-regime switching model and the Bai–Perron sequential method. Since these two series are cointegrated during the sample period (January 1961–June 2013), a short-run dynamic model is thus estimated for each country in which all coefficients and the error-variance terms can freely switch over time between two values prevailing in Regimes 0 and 1. Previous studies indicate that the price of crude oil does not currently affect the aggregate CPI as much as it did in the 1970s. This finding is not disputed in this paper. However, the sequentially-determined break date as well as the time-varying regime-switching probabilities point to two new findings. First, the marginal effects of changes in oil price on consumer energy prices (not the aggregate CPI) have consistently increased and become more instantaneous for both countries after the Western U.S. Energy Crisis of 2000. Second, the speed of adjustment (proxied by different error-correction coefficients) has also risen, particularly for the U.S. Therefore, oil prices exert far more positive and immediate impacts on energy costs in the post- rather than pre-1999 periods.