Real Oil Price Research Articles

Forecasting the Real Price of Oil Under Alternative Specifications of Constant and Time-Varying Volatility

This paper constructs a monthly real-time oil price dataset using backcasting and compares the forecast performance of alternative models of constant and time-varying volatility based on the accuracy of point and density forecasts of real oil prices of both real-time and ex-post revised data. The paper considers Bayesian autoregressive and autoregressive moving average models with respectively, constant volatility and two forms of time-varying volatility: GARCH and stochastic volatility. In addition to the standard time-varying models, more flexible models with volatility in mean and moving average innovations are used to forecast the real price of oil. The results show that time-varying volatility models dominate their counterparts with constant volatility in terms of point forecasting at longer horizons and density forecasting at all horizons. The inclusion of a moving average component provides a substantial improvement in the point and density forecasting performance for both types of time-varying models while stochastic volatility in mean is superfluous for forecasting oil prices.

Nonlinearities in the response of real GDP to oil price shocks

This paper re-examines whether real GDP growth responds asymmetrically to real oil price increases and decreases using a sample that includes the recent oil price declines. I follow Kilian and Vigfusson (2011a) and conduct a test of symmetry. I find no evidence against the null of symmetry using the 3-year net oil price increase specification. Moreover, I find that the results are not stable for different nonlinear transformations of the real price of oil. Finally, evidence of asymmetry vanishes after computing specification robust critical values.

Targeted growth rates for long-horizon crude oil price forecasts

This paper proposes growth rate transformations with targeted lag selection in order to improve the long-horizon forecast accuracy. The method targets lower frequencies of the data that correspond to particular forecast horizons, and is applied to models of the real price of crude oil. Targeted growth rates can improve the forecast precision significantly at horizons of up to five years. For the real price of crude oil, the method can achieve a degree of accuracy up to five years ahead that previously has been achieved only at shorter horizons.

GDP, energy consumption and financial development in Italy

PurposeThis study aims to explore the relationship among energy consumption, real income, financial development and oil prices in Italy over the period 1960-2014.Design/methodology/approachDifferent econometric techniques – such as the General Methods of Moment (GMM) or the AutoRegressive Distributed Lags (ARDL) bounds test – are usually used in the empirical analysis. Moreover, both the Toda and Yamamoto causality tests and the Granger causality tests are applied to the data.FindingsThe results of unit root and stationarity tests show that the variables are non-stationary at levels, but stationary in first-differences form, or I(1). The ARDL bounds F-test reveals an evidence of a long-run relationship among the four variables at 1% significance level. Moreover, an increase in real GDP and oil prices has a significant effect on energy consumption in the long run. The coefficients of estimated error correction term are also negative and statistically significant. In addition, the paper explores the causal relationship between the variables by using a VAR framework, with Toda and Yamamoto but also Granger causality tests, within both multivariate and bivariate systems. The findings indicate that energy consumption is affected by real GDP.Originality/valueThe study also filled the literature gap of applying ARDL technique to examine this relevant issue for Italy.

Estimating the Equilibrium Real Exchange Rate in Algeria during the period: 1980-2015

The aim of this paper is to estimate the long-run Equilibrium Real Exchange Rate (ERER) path using VECM approach, and assesses the degree of misalignment in Algeria. Based on annual data from 1980 to 2015, our results show that the macroeconomic variables such as terms of trade, trade openness, differential productivity with trading partners (Balassa-Samuelson effect), real price of oil, and government expenditures, plays significant role in determining the equilibrium of Algeria’s ERER, the results also reveal that Algerian economy suffered from RER misalignment. As finding, and according to the Edwards’ [6] Model and the Cashin’s [2] model, results showed same evidences that there are three episodes of undervaluation of the Algerian dinar’s and also three episodes of overvaluation, the seventh episode (2004-2015) shows that the Actual ERER appears to have been close to its estimated equilibrium.

Is the recent low oil price attributable to the shale revolution?

The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates that approximately 52% of total U.S. crude oil was produced from shale oil resources in 2015. We examine whether the recent low crude oil price is attributable to this shale revolution in the U.S., using a SVAR model with structural breaks. Our results reveal that U.S. supply shocks are important drivers of real oil price and, for example, explain approximately a quarter of the 73% decline between June 2014 and February 2016. Failure to consider statistically significant structural changes results in underestimating the role played by global supply shocks, while overestimating the role of the demand shocks.

ARE PRODUCT SPREADS USEFUL FOR FORECASTING OIL PRICES? AN EMPIRICAL EVALUATION OF THE VERLEGER HYPOTHESIS

Many oil industry analysts believe that there is predictive power in the product spread, defined as the difference between suitably weighted refined product market prices and the price of crude oil. We derive a number of alternative forecasting model specifications based on product spreads and compare the implied forecasts to the no-change forecast of the real price of oil. We show that not all product spread models are useful for out-of-sample forecasting, but some models are, even at horizons between one and two years. The most accurate model is a time-varying parameter model of gasoline and heating oil spot price spreads that allows for structural change in product markets. We document mean-squared prediction error reductions as high as 20% and directional accuracy as high as 63% at the two-year horizon, making product spread models a good complement to forecasting models based on economic fundamentals, which work best at short horizons.

150 YEARS OF THE OIL PRICE–MACROECONOMY RELATIONSHIP

We use the longest span data that have ever been studied before (from 1870 to 2014) to investigate the relationship between the price of oil and the level of economic activity in the United States. In the context of a bivariate (identified) structural generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (GARCH)-in-Mean VAR in real output growth and the change in the real price of oil, we find that uncertainty about oil prices has had a negative and significant effect on real output. We also find that the responses of real output growth to positive and negative shocks are not very informative of whether they are symmetric or asymmetric, and that accounting for oil price uncertainty tends to amplify the negative dynamic response of real output growth to unfavorable (positive) oil price shocks.

150 Years of the Oil Price-Macroeconomy Relationship

We use the longest span data that have ever been studied before (from 1870 to 2014) to investigate the relationship between the price of oil and the level of economic activity in the United States. In the context of a bivariate (identified) structural GARCH-in-Mean VAR in real output growth and the change in the real price of oil, we find that uncertainty about oil prices has had a negative and significant effect on real output. We also find that the responses of real output growth to positive and negative shocks are not very informative of whether they are symmetric or asymmetric, and that accounting for oil price uncertainty tends to amplify the negative dynamic response of real output growth to unfavorable (positive) oil price shocks.

World Steel Production: A New Monthly Indicator of Global Real Economic Activity

In this paper we propose a new indicator of monthly global real economic activity, named world steel production. We use world steel production, OECD industrial production index and Kilian’s rea index to forecast world real GDP, and key commodity prices. We find that world steel production generates large statistically significant gains in forecasting world real GDP and oil prices, relative to an autoregressive benchmark. A forecast combination of the three indices produces statistically significant gains in forecasting world real GDP, oil, natural gas, gold and fertilizer prices, relative to an autoregressive benchmark.

Peramalan Crude Palm Oil (CPO) Menggunakan Support Vector Regression Kernel Radial Basis

Recently, instead of selecting a kernel has been proposed which uses SVR, where the weight of each kernel is optimized during training. Along this line of research, many pioneering kernel learning algorithms have been proposed. The use of kernels provides a powerful and principled approach to modeling nonlinear patterns through linear patterns in a feature space. Another bene?t is that the design of kernels and linear methods can be decoupled, which greatly facilitates the modularity of machine learning methods. We perform experiments on real data sets crude palm oil prices for application and better illustration using kernel radial basis. We see that evaluation gives a good to fit prediction and actual also good values showing the validity and accuracy of the realized model based on MAPE and R2.
 Keywords: Crude Palm Oil; Forecasting; SVR; Radial Basis; Kernel

Forecasting the Real Price of Oil - Time-Variation and Forecast Combination

This paper sheds light on the questions whether it is possible to generate an accurate forecast of the real price of oil and how it can be improved using forecast combinations. For this reason, my work will investigate the out-of-sample performance of thirteen individual forecasting models. The results show that it is possible to construct better forecasts compared to a no-change benchmark for horizons up to 24 months with gains in the MSPE ratio as high as 25%. In addition, I will extend some of the existing models, e.g the U.S. inventories model by introducing more suitable real time measures for the Brent crude oil price and the VAR model of the global oil market by using different measures for the economic activity. Furthermore, the time performance investigated by constructing recursively estimated MSPE ratios discovers potential weaknesses of the used models. Hence, several different combination approaches are tested with the goal of demonstrating that a combination of individual models is beneficial for the forecasting performance. Thereby, a combination consisting of four models has proven to have a lower MSPE ratio than the best individual models over the medium run and, in addition, to be remarkably stable over time.

Oil prices and the global economy: Is it different this time around?

The recent plunge in oil prices has brought into question the generally accepted view that lower oil prices are good for the US and the global economy. In this paper, using a quarterly multi-country econometric model, we first show that a fall in oil prices lowers interest rates and inflation in most countries, and increases global real equity prices. The effects on real output are positive, although they take longer to materialize (around 4 quarters after the shock). We then re-examine the effects of low oil prices on the US economy over different sub-periods using monthly observations on real oil prices, real equity prices and real dividends. We confirm the perverse positive relationship between oil and equity prices over the period since the 2008 financial crisis highlighted in the recent literature, but show that this relationship has been unstable when considered over the longer time period of 1946–2016. In contrast, we find a stable negative relationship between oil prices and real dividends which we argue is a better proxy for economic activity (as compared to equity prices). On the supply side, the effects of lower oil prices differ widely across the different oil producers, and could be perverse initially, as some of the major oil producers try to compensate their loss of revenues by raising production. Taking demand and supply adjustments to oil price changes as a whole, we conclude that oil markets equilibrate but rather slowly, with large episodic swings between low and high oil prices.

Investment in New Proved Oil Reserves: An Austrian Perspective

AbstractExploration and production (E&P) companies must replace oil produced with new proved reserves in order to sustain their existence, generate future revenues and value. Extensions constitute the largest type of additions to new proved reserves. Adding reserves through extensions is capital intensive and both the real price of oil (represented by real refiner acquisition cost) and real interest (represented by real yield on 10 year Treasury bond) will influence the investment in new discoveries of proved reserves. However, recent periods of unusually high commodity prices and ultra-low interest rates, often linked to monetary policy, may have led to an over-investment in reserves through extensions. Accordingly, using U.S. data (1977–2014) we test for the existence of “explosive behavior” in the volume of extensions over time with financial time series econometric methods referred to as right-tail ADF tests which have traditionally been used for identifying speculative bubbles in asset markets. Empirical evidence identifies a period of explosive (“bubble-like”) behavior in the time series of extensions having occurred beginning 2010 through 2014. This research provides an Austrian explanation for the empirical results consistent with the notion of malinvestment.

Modeling the real ruble exchange rate under monetary policyregime change

The paper estimates vector error correction model (VECM) for the real ruble exchange rate and real oil prices. The VECM model takes into account the structural break in short-term parameters due to the Bank of Russia monetary policy regime change in November 2014. Estimates show that the real exchange rate response to oil price shocks has dramatically changed. Before November2014 it took approximately one year to correct 50% of the real exchange rate gap due to oil prices permanent change. From November 2014 the real exchange rate adapts to oil price shocks almost instantly. The estimate of long-run elasticity of the real exchange rate on real oil prices is 0.33.

Is Real Depreciation or More Government Deficit Expansionary? The Case of Slovenia

Abstract The purpose of this paper is to examine the impacts of the real exchange rate, the government deficit and other relevant variables on aggregate output in Slovenia. Few of the previous studies have applied the AD/AS model to examine the impacts of major macroeconomic variables on aggregate output. This paper makes contributions to the literature by applying a rigorous model to examine how real GDP is affected by the real exchange rate, fiscal policy and other related variables. The exponential GARCH model is applied in empirical work. The paper finds that real depreciation of the Euro may affect Slovenia’s aggregate output positively or negatively and that more central government deficit as a percent of GDP does not affect aggregate output. In addition, Slovenia’s aggregate output is positively associated with the real stock price, the real oil price and real total labor cost or wage and is negatively influenced by the real lending rate and the expected inflation rate. Recent real depreciation of the Euro would help Slovenia’s aggregate output whereas expansionary fiscal policy would not be effective in stimulating the economy.

Well service rigs, operating rigs, and commodity prices

ABSTRACTThis study examines the degree to which the deployment of well service rigs is responsive to changes in commodity prices and operating rigs in terms of long- and short-run estimates of elasticity. Well service rigs respond more to changes in natural gas rigs than oil rigs, and more to real oil prices than to real natural gas prices. In the shorter term, the findings document that the responses of well service rigs to changes in natural gas rigs and real oil prices are highly elastic, with no significant responses to changes in natural gas prices. The error correction model reveals that the change in well service rig usage adjusts to eliminate disequilibrium in the long-run relationship that exists between rigs and commodity prices. This research shows the important role that well service rigs play in the decisions of exploration and production (E&P) companies as they respond to changes in commodity prices.

How does the U.S. natural gas market react to demand and supply shocks in the crude oil market?

In this paper we use monthly data (over the period from January 1976 to December 2012) and a structural VAR model to disentangle demand and supply shocks in the global crude oil market and investigate their effects on the real price of natural gas in the United States. We identify the model by assuming that innovations to the real price of crude oil are predetermined with respect to the natural gas market and show that close to 45% of the variation in the real price of natural gas can be attributed to structural supply and demand shocks in the global crude oil market.

APAKAH OPEC MERUPAKAN KARTEL?: PENDEKATAN KAUSALITAS GRANGER DALAM KERANGKA VECTOR AUTOREGRESSIVE

One would believe that The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is certainly a cartel which curbs production in order to raise the price of its product as well as to share the market among its members. Did energy shock of the 1970’s engineered by an effective cartel of OPEC members acting to share the market by controlling output and influencing market prices? One would also expect OPEC's production to significantly affect the market price of oil as the organization is often accused of curbing production in order to raise prices. This paper tries to determine whether OPEC has the power of affecting the market price of oil and or vice versa. This study uses the Toda and Yamamoto (1995) procedure for testing for Granger non-causality in Vector Autoregressive (VAR) models that involves variables that are integrated of an arbitrary order and that are possibly cointegrated. The results indicate that there is no statistically significant causal relationship between real crude oil price and OPEC production in either direction for full sample period 1974 – 2005. Instead, we find that real crude oil price Granger cause OPEC production in 2 different sub samples period, but not in other direction. As overall we reject cartel hypothesis for OPEC as a whole.Keywords: OPEC, Granger Causality Test, VAR, Toda and Yamamoto

PLUNGING OIL PRICES IMPACT MALAYSIA’S AND INDONESIA’S ECONOMY

Oil has a profound impact on the world economy. This study examines the impact of changes (falling) in oil prices on the two oil producing ASEAN countries – Malaysia and Indonesia using quarterly data from 2005:Q1 to 2014:Q4. A cointegration analysis using an autoregressive distributed lag equation (ARDL) is conducted between oil and the Malaysian and Indonesian economy. Next, single equations are estimated on the impact of oil price changes on macroeconomic variables, followed by a VAR formulation to trace the impact of oil price using impulse response function and variance decomposition. The single equation estimates indicate that real oil prices have a significant positive impact on Malaysia/Indonesia GDP, while it is insignificant on inflation rate and real exchange rate. Using an unrestricted VAR model, real oil price growth shocks have positive and negative response on the growth of Malaysia GDP, Indonesia GDP and US GDP. However, the negative response is found more significant for the growth of Indonesia GDP, while the growth of US GDP has a larger influence on Malaysia GDP as compared to Indonesia GDP. Changes in real oil price are less impactful on Malaysia government expenditure and Malaysian Ringgit, compared to inflation rate and net exports.