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Working Paper
An international perspective on oil price shocks and U.S. economic activity
The effect of oil price shocks on U.S. economic activity seems to have changed since the mid-1990s. A variety of explanations have been offered for the seeming change?including better luck, the reduced energy intensity of the U.S. economy, a more flexible economy, more experience with oil price shocks and better monetary policy. These explanations point to a weakening of the relationship between oil prices shocks and economic activity rather than the fundamentally different response that may be evident since the mid-1990s.> ; Using a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model of world ...
Journal Article
Crude awakening: behind the surge in oil prices
The first few months of 2008 saw crude oil prices breach one barrier after another. They topped $100 a barrel for the first time on Feb. 19, then rose past $103.76 about two weeks later, surpassing the previous inflation-adjusted peak, established in 1980. In April and early May, oil prices pushed past $110 and then $120 a barrel and beyond. ; These milestones reflect a new era in oil markets. After the tumult of the early 1980s, prices remained relatively tame for two decades - in both real and nominal terms. This long stretch of stability ended in 2004, when oil topped $40 a barrel for the ...
Journal Article
California is giving electricity deregulation a bad name
Working Paper
What drives natural gas prices?
For many years, fuel switching between natural gas and residual fuel oil kept natural gas prices closely aligned with those for crude oil. More recently, however, the number of U.S. facilities able to switch between natural gas and residual fuel oil has declined, and over the past five years, U.S. natural gas prices have been on an upward trend with crude oil prices but with considerable independent movement. Natural gas market analysts generally emphasize weather and inventories as drivers of natural gas prices. Using an error-correction model, we show that when these and other additional ...
Journal Article
Some implications of increased cooperation in world oil conservation
In this article, Stephen Brown and Hillard Huntington combine recent studies of world oil markets and the nascent literature on damage estimates from carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to derive cost and benefit curves for the reduction of these emissions through cooperative programs of oil conservation. Their analysis shows that the desirability of extending cooperation in global energy conservation policies is essentially an empirical issue rather than a conceptual one. The current evidence suggests that over the next two decades, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development will ...
Working Paper
Business cycles: the role of energy prices
Oil price shocks have figured prominently U.S. business cycles since the end of World War II?although the relationship seems to have weakened during the 1990s. In addition the economy appears to respond asymmetrically to oil price shocks, rising oil prices hurt economic activity more than falling oil prices help it. This section of the Encyclopedia of Energy sorts through an extensive economics literature that relates oil price shocks to aggregate economic activity. It examines how oil price shocks create business cycles, why they seem to have a disproportionate effect on economic activity, ...
Journal Article
Southwest economy shows strength after second-quarter slowdown
Journal Article
Do energy prices threaten the recovery?
Journal Article
The pricing of natural gas in U.S. markets
Stephen Brown and Mine Ycel examine how different natural gas users and the market institutions serving them affect the transmission of price changes throughout various markets for natural gas. Electrical utilities and industrial users buy much of their natural gas in a competitive spot market served by brokers and interstate pipeline companies. In contrast, most commercial and residential customers are dependent on local distribution companies, which earn a regulated rate of return and buy their gas under long-term contracts. ; Using time-series methods, Brown and Ycel find that even in the ...