Geopolitical oil price uncertainty transmission into core inflation: Evidence from two of the biggest global players

Abstract

This research argues that inflation indirectly correlates with geopolitics through the oil markets. The argument is that uncertainties generated by geopolitics are often transmitted into core inflation through oil prices, and we provide empirical evidence to support this by establishing an uncertainty-oil-macroeconomy nexus for the biggest oil importing countries, the U.S. and China. The study specifically examines whether there are indirect contributions of geopolitical oil price uncertainty to inflation that appear in core inflation, excluding the more volatile food and energy prices. It employs a non-parametric quantile causality technique for analyzing how geopolitical oil price uncertainty and core inflation interact in both countries and conducts rolling windows-based non-parametric quantile causality analysis for robustness. The full-time non-parametric quantile causality results show that geopolitical oil price risk strongly affects core inflation both in mean and variance, especially in the mid-quantiles, and that its effect is greater in variance relative to mean for both countries. The rolling windows-based outcomes indicate that geopolitical oil price risk exerts an increasing influence on core inflation during important geopolitical events such as the Euro crisis, Brexit, presidential elections, trade wars, and COVID-19, and these impacts differ not only between countries, but also according to whether causality is mean or variance. Finally, the significance of the findings is discussed.