post hoc ergo propter once more an evaluation of does monetary policy matter in the spirit of james tobin christina and david romer s paper does monetary policy matter advocates the so called narrative approach to causal inference we demonstrate that this method will not sustain causal inference first it is impossible to distinguish monetary shocks from oil shocks as causes of recessions second a world in which the fed only announces intentions to act cannot be distinguished from one in which it in fact acts third the techniques of dynamic simulation used in the romers study are inappropriate and quantitatively misleading and finally their approach provides no basis for establishing causal asymmetry

oil price shocks and the macroeconomy this paper examines the impact of oil price shocks and attempts to explain why the rise in oil prices up to 2008 had little impact on the world economy it makes three main arguments first that oil prices have never been as important as is popularly thought second that the most important route through which oil prices affect output is monetary policy when oil prices pass through to core inflation monetary authorities raise interest rates slowing growth based on the second argument the third argument is that high oil prices have not reduced growth in recent years because they no longer pass through to core inflation so the monetary tightening previously seen in response to high oil prices is absent it also argues that oil prices had little impact on the global recession of 20089

the effects on agriculture in the united states of an oil import fee this paper focuses on the effect that a crude oil import fee would have on the various producing sectors consuming sectors and household categories in the united states where the interrelationships between these entities is explicitly considered special attention is given to the agricultural sectors of the economy thus in the context of a general equilibrium model the effect of a 5 00 per barrel import fee on the producing sectors in general and the three agricultural sectors plus forestry in particular on the consuming sectors on households and on the government is calculated over the period 1984 90 with such an import fee relative to the absence of a crude oil import fee the model results suggest that there will be a reduction in output by all producing sectors except the crude oil industry by about 13 924 billion there will be a fall in the consumption of goods and services by about 318 million and there will be a decline in aggregate social welfare measured as utility by about 208

the effect of 107th opec ordinary meeting on oil prices and economic performances in japan abstract the aim of this paper is to show the influence of the 107th opec ordinary meeting meeting and investigates the relationships between oil prices and economic activities using an exponential generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity egarch and a vector autoregressive var model from 1991 to 2008 in japan we find that levels and volatilities of oil prices increase after the meeting we examine the effects of it on japanese economic activities employing a granger causality test and data before and after it the empirical result reveals that each price of regular gasoline and diesel has information to be useful to predict the economy after the meeting on the other hand volatilities of regular gasoline and diesel price have information to predict the inflation and economic growth before the meeting respectively after the meeting however these volatilities change to be useful to predictive both inflation and economic growth thus we conclude that the decision of meeting is related to not only the domestic oil prices but also the macroeconomy

stature and the standard of living research on the standard of living now emphasizes alternatives or supplements to the national income accounts this paper reviews the results of two decades of research using stature as a measure of health aspects of human welfare after comparing and contrasting stature with per capita income i consider height patterns discovered by economic historians that challenge traditional beliefs about the past including long term trends cycles in heights and the dreadfully small stature of slave children that was followed by catch up growth the paper concludes with comparisons to work in development economics and suggestions for research

the role of energy in real business cycle models abstract this paper modifies hansen s 1985 analysis of a real business cycle mode with indivisible labor by explicitly including energy as a productive input and modelling the relative price of energy as an exogenous random process one goal is to determine the extent to which the introduction of energy price shocks reduces the reliance of the real business cycle model on unobserved technology shocks the other goal following christiano and eichenbaum 1991 is to compare the correlation between real wages and hours predicted by the energy inclusive model to that predicted by hansen s model

oil and the macroeconomy since world war ii all but one of the u s recessions since world war ii have been preceded typically with a lag of around three fourths of a year by a dramatic increase in the price of crude petroleum this does not mean that oil shocks caused these recessions evidence is presented however that even over the period 1948 72 this correlation is statistically significant and nonspurious supporting the proposition that oil shocks were a contributing factor in at least some of the u s recessions prior to 1972 by extension energy price increases may account for much of post opec macroeconomic performance

oil price fluctuations and singapore economy this study finds that the impact of an oil price shock on the singapore economy is marginal both impulse response and variance decomposition analysis provide reasonable grounds to believe that the impact only had an insignificant adverse effect on singapore s gross domestic product gdp inflation and unemployment rates further analysis on two oil vulnerability measures supports the finding the declining trend of oil intensity in singapore since 1989 and the declining shares of the singapore s expenditure on oil consumption as a percentage of its nominal gdp this study identifies however that the impact of an oil price shock on the singapore economy should not be considered negligible even though it is small

a comparison of the effects of exogenous oil supply shocks on output and inflation in the g7 countries a comparison of the effects of exogenous shocks to global crude oil production on seven major industrialized economies suggests a fair degree of similarity in the real growth responses an exogenous oil supply disruption typically causes a temporary reduction in real gdp growth that is concentrated in the second year after the shock inflation responses are more varied the median cpi inflation response peaks after three to four quarters exogenous oil supply disruptions need not generate sustained inflation or stagflation typical responses include a fall in the real wage higher short term interest rates and a depreciating currency with respect to the dollar despite many qualitative similarities there is strong statistical evidence that the responses to exogenous oil supply disruptions differ across g7 countries for suitable subsets of countries homogeneity cannot be ruled out a counterfactual historical exercise suggests that the evolution of cpi inflation in the g7 countries would have been similar overall to the actual path even in the absence of exogenous shocks to oil production consistent with a monetary explanation of the inflation of the 1970s there is no evidence that the 1973 1974 and 2002 2003 oil supply shocks had a substantial impact on real growth in any g7 country whereas the 1978 1979 1980 and 1990 1991 shocks contributed to lower growth in at least some g7 countries jel e31 e32 q43

relationships between oil price shocks and stock market an empirical analysis from china this paper investigates the interactive relationships between oil price shocks and chinese stock market using multivariate vector auto regression oil price shocks do not show statistically significant impact on the real stock returns of most chinese stock market indices except for manufacturing index and some oil companies some important oil price shocks depress oil company stock prices increase in oil volatility may increase the speculations in mining index and petrochemicals index which raise their stock returns both the world oil price shocks and china oil price shocks can explain much more than interest rates for manufacturing index

cross country differences in the effects of oil shocks abstract we compare the macroeconomic consequences of several types of oil shocks across a set of industrialized countries that are structurally very diverse with respect to the role of oil and other forms of energy in the economy the results crucially depend on the underlying source of the oil price shift when a rise in oil prices is caused by increased global economic activity or a rise in oil specific demand almost all countries experience respectively a temporary increase and transitory decline of real gdp the role of oil and other forms of energy cannot explain the differences in the effects of both shocks across countries in contrast this role is very important to explain asymmetries in the effects of exogenous oil supply shocks whereas net oil and energy importing countries typically face a permanent fall in economic activity the impact is insignificant or even positive in net energy exporting countries in addition countries that improved their net energy position the most over time became less vulnerable to oil supply shocks relative to other countries

price of oil and world inflation and recession new evidence shows that the commonly held assumption that the 1973 74 oil price increase directly affected us and world inflation and subsequent recession is consistent with the empirical data an extended lucas varro real income equation applied to the us united kingdom canada france germany italy japan and the netherlands gives mixed results partly because of price control and decontrol programs simulation experiments on the price control variable using us data finds strong effects further studies can be made when consistent international data is available for the 1979 80 period 18 references 4 figures 3 tables dck

oil price shocks and stock markets in the u s and 13 european countries abstract oil price shocks have a statistically significant impact on real stock returns contemporaneously and or within the following month in the u s and 13 european countries over 1986 1 2005 12 norway as an oil exporter shows a statistically significantly positive response of real stock returns to an oil price increase the median result from variance decomposition analysis is that oil price shocks account for a statistically significant 6 of the volatility in real stock returns for many european countries but not for the u s increased volatility of oil prices significantly depresses real stock returns the contribution of oil price shocks to variability in real stock returns in the u s and most other countries is greater than that of interest rate an increase in real oil price is associated with a significant increase in the short term interest rate in the u s and eight out of 13 european countries within one or two months counter to findings for the u s and for norway there is little evidence of asymmetric effects on real stock returns of positive and negative oil price shocks for oil importing european countries

energy price slump and policy response in the coal chemical industry district a case study of ordos with a system dynamics model we employ system dynamics method towards a coal chemical industry district economy evolution model using coal industry the coal chemical industry their downstream industries and the manufacture related service industry moreover we construct energy price and policy response scenarios based on ordos management experience the results show that the energy price slump had a negative impact on the overall economic development of the coal chemical industry district despite promoting non resource industries furthermore policies had different effects on the industry s output value and profit in the long term developing alternative industries ai helps increase the industrial output value and profit decreasing value added tax vat has immediate results and a distinctive effect on industrial short term production value and profit its long term effect being limited the effect of production limit pl on industrial profit is stronger than output value and financial support fs is more conducive to improve the latter however coal mining and coal chemical loan increases decrease the gross industrial profit level technology innovation ti has the best individual policy overall effect on production value and profits furthermore the simultaneous implementation of pl ti and ai can generate the synergy effect for each of them and the simultaneous implementation of vat and one or couple of other policies will generate the crowding out effect both for vat and other policies

impact of oil price shocks on output inflation and the real exchange rate evidence from selected asean countries this article analyses the impact of oil price shocks on real output inflation and the real exchange rate in thailand malaysia singapore the philippines and indonesia asean 5 using a structural var model the cointegration tests indicate that the macroeconomic variables of these countries are cointegrated and share common trends in the long run the impulse response functions reveal that oil price fluctuations do not impact the asean 5 economies in the long run and much of its effect is absorbed within five to six quarters the variance decomposition results further assert that with a few exceptions oil price shocks do not explain a significant variation in any of the variables under consideration we also identify a very unique pattern of response to oil price fluctuations between malaysia and singapore and between the philippines and thailand the pairs exhibit a high degree of similarity in their responses they do not share any commonalities across the group

monetary policy endogenous inattention and the volatility trade off this paper addresses the output price volatility puzzle by studying the interaction of optimal monetary policy and agents beliefs we assume that agents choose their information acquisition rate by minimizing a loss function that depends on expected forecast errors and information costs endogenous inattention is a nash equilibrium in the information processing rate although a decline of policy activism directly increases output volatility it indirectly anchors expectations which decreases output volatility if the indirect effect dominates then the usual trade off between output and price volatility breaks down this provides a potential explanation for the great moderation that began in the 1980 s

crude oil commodity or financial asset abstract we examine the relation among daily returns to crude oil prices equity prices and commodity markets by modifying previous efforts in two important ways expanding the model to include the equity price for an oil producing firm conocophillips which ameliorates omitted variable bias and estimating the expanded model using the kalman filter which reduces uncertainty associated with ols estimates from rolling windows consistent with the notion of a commodity price beta for oil industry stocks there is a positive correlation between returns to the spot price of wti and conocophillips this correlation indicates not all price changes in crude oil are expected to persist indeed some of the price reductions associated with the asian financial crisis and the price increase associated with the 2008 price spike are not included in our estimate for long run prices in 2008 q4 the correlations between daily returns to crude oil and equities flip from negative to positive we hypothesize that this flip is triggered by a large reduction in interest rates in the fourth quarter of 2008 which is associated with a reduction in convenience yields and a change from backwardation to contango in futures markets these changes increase the returns to holding crude oil as a financial asset relative to holding oil as a commodity

energy price regulatory price distortion and economic growth a case study of china energy prices are often distorted by government control which is justified on the grounds that such control will help mitigate the negative impact of price volatility from oil imports and thus positively affect the domestic economy in this paper we show in a two sector growth model that regulatory price distortion can negatively affect the economy and then based on the model we empirically estimate the impact of the price distortion on output growth in china using monthly time series data from 2005m1 to 2012m12 in contrast to the usual argument for regulatory control to mitigate price volatility we find that regulatory price distortion negatively affects output growth in china during both the short and long term because it is robust to different measures of output and price distortion hence the argument that using price regulation to protect economic growth is undermined and subsequently this study lends its support to energy price deregulation a market oriented energy price regime may improve the resilience of the domestic economy to global oil price shocks

energy and depletable resources economics and policy 1973 1998 abstract this paper reviews the impact of the literature in depletable resources and energy economics over the period 1973 1998 particularly the initial period of publication of the journal of environmental economics and management 1974 1998 a discussion of prominent policy issues in this arena is provided along with an indication of what academic economics papers have contributed to that debate this is followed by a citation analysis of contributions in the fields of energy and exhaustible resource economics for each of these two fields a list of the top papers in each five year period from 1974 to 1998 is presented along with a list of the top journals in each decade based on average citations per article the top ten cited articles in the fields in the journal of environmental economics and management are also presented

macroeconomic performance of oil price shocks outlier evidence from nineteen major oil related countries regions abstract as a special energy commodity oil price shocks can affect not only the energy market but also the performance of the macroeconomy this research provides complementary explanations for nineteen major oil related countries regions macroeconomic effects caused by unexpected oil price changes it focuses on the macroeconomic performance of oil price shocks from outlier perspective investigating the inner hidden factors of co movements between oil price shocks and macroeconomy three methods called empirical covariance ec method robust covariance rc method and one class support vector machine svm method are used in the outlier detection empirical results show that a one class svm method has the best environmental adaptability for detecting the outlier performance of the co movements between oil price shocks and macroeconomy followed by ec and rc methods b according to the time axis the outlier performances of gross domestic production consumer price index and unemployment rate are all concentrated in 2005 2014 which is highly consistent with the oil price shock process and c according to the spatial axis countries four categories with similar outlier performances are obtained outlier performance of macroeconomy of oil related country region in lower levels seems to be worse than that of the country region in higher levels which can be attributed to more attentions paid by higher leveled oil related countries on the oil price shock response system to relieve the severe macroeconomic impacts caused by oil price shocks

prediction tests for structural stability of multiple time series comparing forecasts with actually observed values is one possible way to check the structural stability of time series in this study prediction tests based on this principle are investigated in the context of multiple time series analysis it is found that the power of tests based on univariate series may exceed that of tests based on multivariate series and vice versa therefore it is proposed to use both kinds of tests in practice the tests are used to investigate the stability of a system of west german economic data during and after the 1973 1974 and 1979 1980 oil price increases

fathers employment and sons stature the long run effects of a positive regional employment shock in south africa s mining industry abstracti exploit the unexpected increase in employment in 1975 1976 and 1977 in the south african homelands to compare the long term adult outcomes of children whose fathers benefited from the employment increase to those who did not using a standard difference in difference approach i find that the shock affected males who were either newborn or in utero at the time providing support to the fetal origins hypothesis and showing the importance of mother s nutrition the income increases did not raise household income above the poverty datum line explaining why older individuals were not affected this study provides previously unmeasured individual level information on the quality of life in the homelands during apartheid an era when african living standards were neglected but unmeasured because of a lack of data collection

oil prices inflation and interest rates in a structural cointegrated var model for the g 7 countries sharp increases in the price of oil are generally seen as a major contributor to business cycle asymmetries moreover the very recent highs registered in the world oil market are causing concern about possible slowdowns in the economic performance of the most developed countries in this paper a structural cointegrated var model has been considered for the g 7 countries in order to study the direct effects of oil price shocks on output and prices and the reaction of monetary variables to external shocks our results can be summarized as follows i a stationary money demand as suggested by the classic theory of money can be identified for most countries ii according to the estimated coefficients of the structural part of the model for all countries except japan and u k the null hypothesis of an influence of oil prices on the inflation rate cannot be rejected inflation rate shocks are transmitted to the real economy by increasing interest rates iii impulse response analysis suggests for most countries the existence of an instantaneous temporary effect of oil price innovations on prices iv impulse response functions indicate different monetary policy reactions to inflationary and growth shocks v the simulation exercises directed to estimate the total impact of the 1990 oil price shock indicate that for some countries u s a significant part of the effects of the oil price shock is due to the monetary policy reaction function for other countries canada france and italy however the total impact is offset at least in part by an easing of monetary conditions

the behavior of money and other economic variables two natural experiments abstract the object of this paper is to test the performance of the quantity theory model and the related proposition of monetary neutrality in a context in which to use bernanke s phraseology money move d for reasons that were plausibly unrelated to the current state of the economy we investigate this question using data from two recent episodes of monetary policy regime change the move to floating exchange rates throughout the industrialized world following the breakdown of bretton woods in the early 1970s and the shift toward less expansive monetary policy that to varying degrees took place in these countries a decade or so later the results of this exercise are highly positive the money price relationship that we observe is fully consistent with theory growth shifts in the nominal stock of money and in the price level are highly correlated and bear a one to one relation to one another growth shifts in exchange rates are significantly related both to growth shifts in relative price levels and to growth shifts in relative excess supplies of money the classical neutrality proposition in this context superneutrality in general receives strong though not totally unambiguous support

are energy prices cyclical abstract conventional analysis implies that energy price declines from 1981 to 1983 were caused by the world recession the alternative view presented in this paper is that these declines arose largely in response to changes in us energy policy and were not due to the business cycle after developing the theoretical conditions for cyclical prices in various oil and energy markets we examine us macroeconomic data 1947 1980 to test these competing views we conclude that declining oil and energy prices are not a business cycle phenomenon indeed the evidence offers support for the reverse causation that energy prices cause business cycles

the effects of oil price on regional economies with different production structures a case study from korea using a structural var model abstract this study analyzes the effects of oil price fluctuations on regional macroeconomic variables with a structural var model we classified fifteen metropolitan cities and provinces of korea into four major regions capital central honam and gyeongsang and examined the effects of oil price fluctuations on the economy of these regions the results in the short and long term lag structures show a negative response to industrial production and price the capital region is less affected by oil price fluctuations than the other three provincial regions we concluded that the government should focus on creating an industrial environment to accumulate production factors and technologies in oil price sensitive regions

nonlinear causality between crude oil price and exchange rate a comparative study of china and india while several studies have examined the linear causal relationship between oil prices and exchange rates little is known about the nonlinear causality between these two variables the present paper tries to fill this research gap in the context of india and china by applying the hiemstra and jones 1994 nonlinear granger causality test to the var residuals the study finds a significant bi directional nonlinear granger causality between oil prices and exchange rates in both countries the findings suggest that the nonlinearity of oil price influences the exchange rate irrespective of the exchange rate regimes further to check robustness the persistence in the variance of oil price and exchange rate is taken into account using a garch 1 1 model while the results consistently hold in the case of india with respect to china a unidirectional causality runs from exchange rate to oil price however the oil price in china does not granger cause exchange rate

partial adjustment and staggered price setting this paper compares taylor style staggered price setting to partial adjustment of prices or calvo staggering in a small optimizing is lm model in contrast to the overwhelming perception in the literature the models are not similar for most parameterizations in particular the dynamic response of the economy to shocks is quite different in the two models and the welfare cost of price rigidity is eight or more times larger in the calvo model than in the taylor model for typical calibrations suggestions for calibrations under which the models are more similar are also presented

causality relationship between the price of oil and economic growth in japan abstract this paper investigates the relationship between the price of oil and economic growth in japan during the period from 2000 to 2008 using an exponential generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity egarch model we employ a residual cross correlation function ccf approach developed by cheung y w ng n k 1996 a causality in variance test and its application to financial market prices journal of econometrics 72 33 48 the empirical results reveal that the economic growth rate granger causes the change of oil price in mean and variance and the change of oil price granger causes the economic growth rate in mean and variance previous studies have analyzed the response of economic activity to oil price shocks however we analyze the causality relations for both means and variances and identify the direction of information flow and the timing of causation

not all sectors are alike differential impacts of shocks in oil prices on the sectors of the colombian economy abstract in this paper an estimation of differential impacts of shocks in oil prices on the economic sectors in the oil exporting colombia is made using data from the world economy and adopting the model of structural autoregressive vectors var employed by kilian et al 2009 oil prices shocks are estimated according to three types of origin oil supply oil demand and aggregate demand subsequently using data from the colombian economy the effects that these shocks have on sectoral production in colombia are estimated through the use of var models which allow direct impacts to be separated from those that are transmitted through the interrelations between sectors the results obtained show that only the specific demand for oil and aggregate demand shocks affect significantly the total production in colombia although not in all sectors only manufacturing industry and electricity gas and water sectors are directly and significantly affected by both types of demand shocks however when considering the indirect effects transmitted through the interrelations between sectors it was found that the total impacts of these two types of shocks affect the construction transport and trade restaurants and hotels sectors as the effect is positive the colombian economy benefits from increases in oil prices due to demand factors but responds negatively when the opposite situation occurs

can opec cause inflation and recession abstract this paper addresses an issue that has been the subject of debate in the media and in academic circles the issue concerns the effect of higher oil prices initiated by opec on economic activity in oecd countries results of cointegration tests indicate that there is no long run relationship between oil prices and macroeconomic variables in oecd countries however causality testing indicates the existence of unidirectional causality from oil prices to domestic prices and output

a re examination of stationarity of energy consumption evidence from new unit root tests abstract in this paper we re examine the stochastic behaviour of per capita total primary energy consumption across 178 countries around the world for this purpose in addition to conventional unit root tests we apply newly developed tests that allow for nonlinear adjustments and structural breaks in the data generating process the results of the unit root tests show that allowing for structural breaks and nonlinearity result in more frequent rejection of the null hypothesis of unit root suggesting that most of the series under consideration follow a stationary process these findings imply that both energy economists and policy makers must be careful and take account of possible nonlinearities and structural breaks in their analyses of energy consumption in addition the results imply that government interventions into the energy markets in most countries have no effect in the long run although the short run effects of the interventions depend on the size and the direction of interventions

this is what happened to the oil price macroeconomy relationship abstract many of the quarterly oil price increases observed since 1985 are corrections to even bigger oil price decreases the previous quarter when one looks at the net increase in oil prices over the year recent data are consistent with the historical correlation between oil shocks and recessions

oil revenue shocks and government spending behavior in iran abstract oil revenues play an important role in the political economy of iran on average 60 of the iranian government revenues and 90 of export revenues originate from oil and gas resources current international sanctions on iran have mainly targeted the oil production capacity of iran and its exports to the global markets in this study we analyze the dynamic effects of oil shocks on different categories of the iranian government expenditures from 1959 to 2007 using impulse response functions irf and variance decomposition analysis vdc techniques the main results show that iran s military and security expenditures significantly respond to a shock in oil revenues or oil prices while social spending components do not show significant reactions to such shocks

factor substitution rational expectations and the effects of commodity price shocks on employment and investment within an aggregate model with three inputs to production the paper studies the effects of an increase in the price of one of the inputs called commodities no restrictions are placed on the production possibility constraint and expectations are assumed to be formed rationally after considering the effects on the demand for the two remaining inputs labor and capital the paper analyzes the effects on employment under a wage rigidity constraint a dynamic formulation is used to analyze the effects on investment which are found to depend weakly and sometimes perversely on partial substitution parameters

macroeconomic expectations of households and professional forecasters economists have long emphasized the importance of expectations in determining macroeconomic outcomes yet there has been almost no recent effort to model actual empirical expectations data instead m acroeconomists usually simply assume that expectations are rational this paper shows that while empirical household expectations are not rational in the usual sense expectational dynamics are well captured by a model in which households views derive from news reports of the views of professional forecasters which in turn may be rational the model s estimates imply that people only occasionally pay attention to news reports this inattention generates stickyness in aggregate expectations with important macroeconomic consequences

oil price shocks stock market economic activity and employment in greece abstract using a multivariate vector autoregression var approach this paper attempts to shed light into the dynamic relationship among oil prices real stock prices interest rates real economic activity and employment for greece the empirical evidence suggests that oil price changes affect real economic activity and employment oil prices are important in explaining stock price movements stock returns do not lead to changes in real activity and employment

recent oil price shock and tunisian economy abstract the objective of this paper is to study the oil prices macroeconomy relationship by the analysis of the role of subsidy policy the vector autoregression var method was employed to analyze the data over the period 1993 q1 2007 q3 the results of the model using both linear and non linear specifications indicate that there is no direct impact of oil price shock on the economic activity the shock of oil prices affects economic activity indirectly the most significant channel by which the effects of the shock are transmitted is the government s spending

slow oil shocks and the weakening of the oil price macroeconomy relationship abstract many papers have been documenting and analysing the asymmetry and the weakening of the oil price macroeconomy relationship as off the early eighties while there seems to be a consensus about the factors causing the asymmetry namely adjustment costs which offset the benefits of low energy prices the debate about the weakening of the relationship is not over yet moreover the alternative oil price specifications which have been proposed by mork 1989 lee et al 1995 and hamilton 1996 to restore the stability of the relationship fail to granger cause output or unemployment in post 1980 data by using the concept of accelerations of the oil price we show that the weakening of this relationship corresponds to the appearance of slow oil price increases which have less impact on the economy when filtering out these slow oil price variations from the sample we manage to rehabilitate the causality running from the oil price to the macroeconomy and show that far from weakening the oil price accelerations gdp relationship has even been growing stronger since the early eighties

exploring the oil price and real gdp nexus for a small island economy the fiji islands the goal of this paper is to examine the relationship between real gdp and oil prices using time series data for the period 1970 2005 our main finding is that an increase in oil has a positive albeit inelastic impact on real gdp inconsistent with the bulk of the literature we argue that this is not a surprising result for the fiji islands our central argument focuses on two aspects of the fijian economy 1 the fact that actual output in fiji has been around 50 per cent less than potential output thus fiji s actual output has not reached a threshold level at which oil prices can negatively impact output and 2 a rise in oil prices filters through to value added which in turn is reflected in a larger actual output

sticky information the impact of different information updating assumptions vector auto regressions applied to u s data find that inflation and output experience persistent and hump shaped responses to unanticipated monetary shocks one monetary model that can generate these responses employs sticky information under sticky information a firm may costlessly change its nominal price every period however the firm can only occasionally update the information upon which it bases decisions we show that this result hinges critically on the assumption that each firm receives information updates randomly if on the other hand each firm updates its information at infrequent but fixed intervals a the output response is not persistent and only weakly hump shaped under one year price contracts b the inflation response suffers diminished persistence and a reduced hump shape c the inflation response remains unrealistic under longer durations

oil price movements and stock markets revisited a case of sector stock price indexes in the g 7 countries abstract applying sector stock prices and oil prices in 1991 01 2009 05 from the g7 countries we find oil price shocks do not significantly impact the composite index in each country however stock price changes in germany the uk and the us were found to lead oil price changes as for the interaction between oil price changes and sector stock price changes we find short run negative causal relationships 4 of 7 sector index returns were impacted by oil price changes in germany 2 in the us and 1 in france in particular stock returns of information technology and consumer staples sectors were found to be impacted most by oil price shocks followed by financial utilities and transportation sectors in terms of causality from sector stock price changes to oil price changes we find stock price changes lead oil price changes in 8 of 9 sectors in germany most in the g7 countries followed by the uk italy france canada and the us no such a causal relationship however is found for japan with respect to specific sectors stock price changes in consumer staples and materials sectors were impacted most significantly by oil price changes followed by transportation financial energy health care industrials utilities information technology and telecommunication sectors with the exception of consumer discretionary sector in addition short term stock price changes are found to lead positively oil price changes

the macroeconomic effects of oil price fluctuations on a small open oil producing country the case of trinidad and tobago using vector autoregressive var methodology this paper empirically investigates the macroeconomic effects of oil price fluctuations on trinidad and tobago overall we find that the price of oil is a major determinant of economic activity of the country our impulse response functions suggest that following a positive oil price shock output falls within the first two years followed by positive and growing response we also investigate the macroeconomic impact of oil price volatility results suggest that an unanticipated shock to oil price volatility brings about random swings in the macroeconomy however only government revenue and the price level exhibit significant responses with regard to the magnitude of the responses shocks to oil price volatility tend to yield smaller macroeconomic impacts in comparison to shocks to oil prices variance decompositions suggest that the price of oil is a major component of forecast variation for most macroeconomic variables finally granger causality tests indicate causality from oil prices to output and oil prices to government revenue

the effects of oil price shocks on the economies of the gulf co operation council countries nonlinear analysis abstract this paper examines the effects of oil price shocks on the real gdp of the gulf cooperation council gcc countries the empirical method used is the nonlinear cointegrating autoregressive distributed lag nardl model of shin et al 2013 in which short run and long run nonlinearities are introduced via positive and negative partial sum decompositions of the explanatory variable s the results suggest evidence of asymmetries in all the cases we find significant positive oil price changes in all the cases with the expected positive sign implying that increases in oil price lead to increases in real gdp conversely negative oil price changes are significant for only kuwait and qatar with the expected positive sign suggesting that decreases in oil price lead to decreases in their real gdp further analysis implemented using panel data shows that positive oil prices changes increase real gdp and negative changes decrease real gdp overall the results suggest that positive oil price changes have a considerably larger impact on real gdp than negative changes

oil and the macroeconomy a markov state switching approach this paper analyzes the relationship between oil price shocks and postwar u s business cycle fluctuations the authors develop a generalized markov switching model of output that includes a measure of net real oil price increases and examine the capabilities of this variable to generate shifts in the mean of gdp growth and to predict transitions between dichotomous growth phases the results indicate that while the behavior of oil prices has been a contributing factor to the mean of low growth phases of output movements in oil prices generally have not been a principal determinant in the historical evidence of these phases copyright 1997 by ohio state university press

the impact of a broad based energy tax on the us economy abstract this paper investigates the impact of a broad based energy tax on the us economy particularly the agricultural sectors the analytical approach used consists of a general equilibrium model composed of 12 producing sectors 13 consuming sectors six household categories classified by income and a government the effects of a 10 cents btu 10 6 tax on energy on prices and quantities are examined the results are revealing

oil price shocks and real gdp growth empirical evidence for some oecd countries this study assesses empirically the effects of oil price shocks on the real economic activity of the main industrialized countries multivariate var analysis is carried out using both linear and non linear models the latter category includes three approaches employed in the literature namely the asymmetric scaled and net specifications evidence of a non linear impact of oil prices on real gdp is found in particular oil price increases are found to have an impact on gdp growth of a larger magnitude than that of oil price declines with the latter being statistically insignificant in most cases among oil importing countries oil price increases are found to have a negative impact on economic activity in all cases but japan moreover the effect of oil shocks on gdp growth differs between the two oil exporting countries in the sample with the uk being negatively affected by an oil price increase and norway benefiting from it

the effects of oil price shocks on the iranian economy abstract the iranian economy is highly vulnerable to oil price fluctuations this paper analyzes the dynamic relationship between oil price shocks and major macroeconomic variables in iran by applying a var approach the study points out the asymmetric effects of oil price shocks for instance positive as well as negative oil price shocks significantly increase inflation we find a strong positive relationship between positive oil price changes and industrial output growth unexpectedly we can only identify a marginal impact of oil price fluctuations on real government expenditures furthermore we observe the dutch disease syndrome through significant real effective exchange rate appreciation

sovereign credit ratings growth volatility and the global financial crisis using monthly data from january 1996 to may 2010 for a panel of 76 developed and emerging economies and adopting an instrumental variable iv estimation technique by correcting for both heterogeneity and endogeneity with the generalized two stage least squares g2sls ec2sls procedure method suggested by balestra and varadharajan krishnakumar 1987 and baltagi and li 1995 this article provides empirical evidence that volatility of per capita gdp growth is reduced when there are positive changes in credit ratings in other words when sovereign credit risk improves to deal with potential simultaneity between sovereign credit ratings and output volatility a system 3sls approach is undertaken and our findings remain robust by weakening the volatility dampening effects of ratings changes it is found that the global financial crisis gfc has enhanced macroeconomic volatility one of the channels via which sovereign rating changes affect growth volatility is the financial markets repricing of sove

renewable energy oil prices and economic activity a granger causality in quantiles analysis this paper analyzes the causal relationship between renewable energy consumption oil prices and economic activity in the united states from july 1989 to july 2016 considering all quantiles of the distribution although the concept of granger causality is defined for the conditional distribution the majority of papers have tested granger causality using conditional mean regression models in which the causal relations are linear we apply a granger causality in quantiles analysis that evaluates causal relations in each quantile of the distribution under this approach we can discriminate between causality affecting the median and the tails of the conditional distribution we find evidence of bi directional causality between changes in renewable energy consumption and economic growth at the lowest tail of the distribution besides changes in renewable energy consumption lead economic growth at the highest tail of the distribution our results also support the unidirectional causality from fluctuations in oil prices to economic growth at the extreme quantiles of the distribution finally we find evidence of lower tail dependence from changes in oil prices to changes in renewable energy consumption our findings call for government policies aimed at developing renewable energy markets to increase energy efficiency in the u s

crude oil and the macroeconomy tests of some popular notions a note perhaps no other economic events in the post world war ii era have generated as much attention as the series of crude oil price shocks that have jolted the world economy since the opec boycott of 1973 a tremendous amount of space in the popular and professional literature has been devoted to analyzing the impacts of these shocks on the developed economies and the adjustments these shocks have induced one residual of this literature has been a general impression that since 1973 the functional relationship between crude oil prices and the developed macroeconomies has been dramatically and fundamentally altered yet to our knowledge no one has formally tested this impression recent evidence of hamilton 1983 suggests that crude oil prices had a strong impact on the u s business cycle well before 1973 further while textbook treatments of oil price shocks tend to highlight cost push inflationary effects the research of berndt and wood 1975 1979 and wilcox 1983 indicates the net complementarity between energy and capital in the u s economy is quite strong both before and after 1973 thus oil price shocks may have stronger real effects than generally believed in this paper we formally test three popular notions associated with the so called

energy prices and investment over the business cycle abstract this paper develops a theoretical investment equation for the firm which explicitly includes the relationship between investment and the price of energy using intertemporal comparative statics we investigate how economic conditions affect that relationship in a two period model the net present value of the firm s cash inflows is maximized subject to constraints the resulting investment equation for the firm is summed over all firms to produce an aggregate investment equation by assuming that aggregate shocks do not affect every firm simultaneously we could investigate the effects of varying economic conditions on the relationship under study we find that energy price increases will retard aggregate real investment also this restraining impact will be greatest during boom periods and least during recessions further the impact of an energy price increase on aggregate investment diminishes as the level of energy prices increases we show that simple ols techniques are not appropriate for empirical estimation of the relationship between aggregate investment and energy price they could produce inconsistent results depending on the time period studied because of the business cycle effects a survey of corporations along product lines would be useful to test for such non linearity

linking the gas and oil markets with the stock market investigating the u s relationship energy markets can represent a strategic advantage when they are supporting each other and specifically when energy segments are complementary enough to support economic development and growth in this light a high and strategic interest relies on the possible interactions between energy market segments as well as their impact on a given country s financial market the proposed research focuses on the interaction between the u s natural gas and u s crude oil markets on one side and their dependencies with the u s stock market on the other side after controlling for structural changes or breaks we characterize previous dependencies with the multivariate copula methodology first we assess the joint link prevailing between the natural gas and crude oil markets then we characterize the joint risk structure prevailing between previous energy markets and the u s stock market finally we assess the joint dependence structure between the natural gas crude oil and stock markets

a global model of oecd aggregate supply and demand using vector autoregressive techniques this paper presents a vector autoregressive model of the aggregate oecd economy using a theoretical model of global aggregate supply and demand relationships between industrial production cpi money supply and energy prices are examined using f tests variance decompositions and impulse response functions the empirical results are consistent with theory energy prices influence output and the price level in the short run while money influences the price level in the long run despite data problems this approach appears to be a reasonable compromise between simple arima models and the very detailed link type models

gasoline consumption and the stock of motor vehicles an empirical analysis for the swiss economy abstract the demand for gasoline and the stock of cars is empirically explained for the swiss economy by applying statistical methods from modern time series analysis to annual data over the period 1962 1985 the short run price and income elasticities of gasoline consumption are 0 3 to 0 45 and 0 7 the price elasticity became substantially higher after the first opec shock in 1973 pollution control measures introduced in 1982 negatively affected the stock of cars longer run effects operating over changes in the size of the stock and the fuel efficiency of cars are stretched out over several years as shown by a variety of simulation experiments

historical energy price shocks and their changing effects on the economy abstract the purpose of this paper is to identify the changes in the impact of energy shocks on economic activity with an interest in assessing if an economy s vulnerability and resilience to shocks improved with economic development using data on the united kingdom over the last three hundred years the paper identifies supply aggregate demand and residual shocks to energy prices and estimates their changing influence on energy prices and gdp the results suggest that the impacts of supply shocks rose with its increasing dependence on coal and declined with its partial transition to oil however the transition from exporting coal to importing oil increased the negative impacts of demand shocks more generally the results indicate that improvements in vulnerability and resilience to shocks did not progress systematically as the economy developed instead the changes in impacts depended greatly on the circumstances related to the demand for and supply of energy sources if these experiences are transferable to future markets a transition to a diversified mix of renewable energy is likely to reduce vulnerability and increase resilience to energy price shocks

a wavelet analysis of mean and volatility spillovers between oil and brics stock markets this paper investigates the spillover effects of volatility and shocks between oil prices and the brics stock markets using multivariate approach and wavelet analysis at different time horizons hence we combine a multivariate arma garch model and wavelet multiresolution analysis to study this phenomenon a bivariate arma 1 1 garch 1 1 cdcc student t model was joined with modwt filter to capture a broad range of possible spillover effects in mean and variances of level prices at various time horizons generally empirical results provide strong evidence of time varying volatility in all markets under study however our proposed approach shows that oil price and stock market prices are directly affected by their own news and volatilities and indirectly affected by the volatilities of other prices and wavelet scale the results show also that mean and volatility spillover effects was decomposed into many sub spillovers on different time scales according to heterogeneous investors and market participants the practical implications of this study are critical innovative and useful for the local and international investors and also for the portfolio managers they can utilize this study to formulate the optimal oil bricks stock portfolios as well as lead to more accurate predictions of volatility spillovers patterns also in developing their hedging strategies

exploiting the oil gdp effect to support renewables deployment the empirical evidence from a growing body of academic literature clearly suggests that oil price increases and volatility dampen macroeconomic growth by raising inflation and unemployment and by depressing the value of financial and other assets surprisingly this issue seems to have received little attention from energy policy makers in percentage terms the oil gdp effect is relatively small producing losses in the order of 0 5 of gdp for a 10 oil price increase in absolute terms however even a 10 oil price rise oil has risen at least 50 in the last year alone produces gdp losses that could they have been averted would significantly offset the cost of increased re deployment this paper draws on the empirical oil gdp literature which we summarize to show that i by displacing gas and oil renewable energy investments can help nations avoid costly macroeconomic losses produced by the oil gdp effect and ii that these avoided losses represent a significant external macroeconomic benefit of such investments we show that a 10 increase in re share avoids gdp losses in the range of 29 53 billion in the us and the eu 49 90 billion for oecd these avoided losses offset one fifth of the re investment needs projected by the erec and half the oecd investment projected by a g 8 task force for the us the figures further suggest that each additional kw of renewables on average avoids 250 450 in gdp losses a figure that varies across technologies as a function of annual capacity factors we approximate that the offset is worth 200 kw for wind and solar and 800 kw for geothermal and biomass while we focus only on renewables the gdp offset will apply in some measure to other non fossil technologies including energy efficiency dsm and nuclear the societal valuation of non fossil alternatives must reflect these avoided gdp losses whose benefit is not fully captured by private investors this said we fully recognize that wealth created in this manner does not directly form a pool of public funds that is easily earmarked for renewables support finally the oil gdp relationship has important implications for correctly estimating direct electricity generating cost for conventional and renewable alternatives and for developing more useful energy security and diversity concepts we also address these issues

understanding the oil price exchange rate nexus for the fiji islands in this paper we examine the relationship between oil price and the fiji us exchange rate using daily data for the period 2000 2006 we use the generalised autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity garch and exponential garch egarch models to estimate the impact of oil price on the nominal exchange rate we find that a rise in oil prices leads to an appreciation of the fijian dollar vis a vis the us dollar

changing crude oil price effects on us agricultural employment the effect of changes in the price of crude oil on agricultural employment in the usa between 1947 and 1995 is investigated after reviewing previous assessments of the issue the existence of an empirical relationship between agricultural employment and crude oil price changes is established using granger causality subsequently the nature of the relationship is estimated with the results suggesting that at least three full years are required before the measurable effects of a percentage change in the real price of crude oil on the change in agricultural employment are exhausted finally the structural stability of the functional relationship between the change in agricultural employment and changes in the price of crude oil the percentage changes in expected net farm income realized technological innovation and the wage rate is studied

economic impacts of higher oil and gas prices the role of international trade for germany the analysis concentrates on direct and indirect price increases induced shifts in international trade and structural changes in the oil importing economies the paper at hand asks whether a stabilizing effect via international trade and domestic structural change on the gdp of oil importing countries can be observed if a permanent oil price increase occurs at least for germany structural change from consumer goods to investment goods industry and an improvement of international competitiveness limit negative impacts of increased energy prices analysis is based on the extensive and disaggregated global ginfors model and the detailed inforge model for the german economy

on inflation and output with costly price changes a simple unifying result this paper determines the real effects of credible disinflation when price setting is staggered the results are surprising a fairly quick disinflation causes a boom this finding suggests that nominal price rigidity alone does not explain why disinflation is costly in actual economies this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

the economic growth enigma revisited the eu 15 since the 1970s abstract current macro econometric models mostly incorporate just two factors of production labour and capital with a time dependent multiplier representing technological change or total factor productivity these models assume that energy is an intermediate product of some combination of human labour and capital these models also assume that the supply of energy is driven by economic demand we assume the contrary i e that useful energy is a primary input derived mostly from natural capital this failure to capture the impact of primary resources as useful energy on economic growth leads to inappropriate formulation of economic growth theories to understand that impact better we need explicit evidence of marginal products of capital labour and useful energy or useful work as applied to the explanation of the past half century of economic growth of the eu 15 countries the new results demonstrate the use of non parametric relationships between capital labour and useful energy to explain economic growth they also indicate that marginal products of capital labour and useful energy are variable the marginal product depends on the levels of capital stock labour input and useful energy flows the proposed semi parametric production function suggests country specific policy implications for the eu and other countries

energy consumption at business cycle horizons the case of the united states in this paper we propose a simple extension to a keynesian type macro model by augmenting it with energy consumption we show the relationship between energy consumption and output in a macroeconomic setting and ask the question do permanent shocks dominate changes in energy consumption and output at business cycle horizons for the united states to achieve the goal of this paper we undertake a variance decomposition analysis of shocks based on a common trend and common cycle framework within a vector error correction model our main finding is that permanent shocks explain the bulk of the variations in energy consumption and output at business cycle horizons for the united states

oil shocks and financial systemic stress international evidence abstract by conducting a structural var analysis on the financial systemic stress in 20 countries this paper provides international evidence that oil structural shocks impact not only stress in individual financial markets but also their connectedness the oil structural shocks explain a large fraction of the variation in the connectedness among various financial markets the effect of oil structural shocks on financial systemic stress is largely dependent on the origins of oil price changes and a country s net oil export position in most oil importing economies financial systemic stress is negatively impacted by supply and aggregate demand shocks and positively impacted by oil market specific demand shocks opposite patterns are detected in oil exporting economies the effects of the spillovers are asymmetrically related with market conditions during normal periods more risks are spilled over from the oil market to financial systems but during financial crises the opposite occurs in periods of financial crises and oil price collapses there is noticeable contagion between the oil market and financial systems

on the dynamic effects of oil price shocks a study using industry level data abstract this paper analyzes the effects of oil price shocks on demand and supply in various industries the impulse responses of identified var models indicate that for industries that have a large cost share of oil such as petroleum refinery and industrial chemicals oil price shocks mainly reduce supply in contrast for many other industries with the automobile industry being a particularly important example oil price shocks mainly reduce demand the paper suggests that oil price shocks influence economic activities beyond that explained by direct input cost effects possibly by delaying purchasing decisions of durable goods

the relationship between oil price shocks and china s macro economy an empirical analysis china postdoctoral science foundation 20090460751 ministry of education of the people s republic of china 09yjc790167 09yja820074 national social science funds 09zd050 08ajy031

identifying the oil price macroeconomy relationship an empirical mode decomposition analysis of us data this paper employs the empirical mode decomposition emd method to filter cyclical components of us quarterly gross domestic product gdp and quarterly average oil price west texas intermediate wti the method is adaptive and applicable to non linear and non stationary data a correlation analysis of the resulting components is performed and examined for insights into the relationship between oil and the economy several components of this relationship are identified however the principal one is that the medium run component of the oil price has a negative relationship with the main cyclical component of the gdp in addition weak correlations suggesting a lagging demand driven component and a long run component of the relationship were also identified comparisons of these findings with significant oil supply disruption and recession dates were supportive the study identifies a number of lessons applicable to recent oil market events including the eventuality of persistent oil price and economic decline following a long oil price run up in addition it was found that oil market related exogenous events are associated with short to medium run price implications regardless of whether they lead to actual supply losses

scarcity resource price uncertainty and economic growth over the course of the past decade significant steps have been taken to empirically link indicators of resource scarcity to changes in economic growth this paper extends this previous literature in two ways first rather than concentrating exclusively on energy we focus on the technological change embodied in the prices of an array of complementary natural resource inputs second we investigate using g arch methods the importance of resource price uncertainty as well as resource price levels on aggregate economic growth we find that output growth is significantly influenced by both resource price levels and resource price uncertainty

aggregate impacts of the proposed reduction in the motor fuels excise tax in the united states this paper assesses the effects of the proposed reduction in the excise tax on gasoline and diesel fuel on the us economy the analytical approach used in the analysis consists of a computable general equilibrium model composed of 14 producing sectors 14 consuming sectors six household categories classified by income and a government the effects of a 4 3 cents gallon reduction in the excise tax on gasoline and diesel fuel on prices and quantities are examined the results suggest for example a decrease in the tax would result in higher output by the producing sectors by approximately 2 86 billion an expansion in the consumption of goods and services by approximately 3 48 billion and an increase in welfare by approximately 3 59 billion the government would realize a decrease in revenue of approximately 2 37 billion when subjected to a sensitivity analysis the results are reasonably robust with regard to the assumption of the values of the substitution elasticities

trade linkages and transmission of oil price fluctuations abstract this study is an attempt to ascertain how oil price shock can affect a trade linked system via monetary variables to this end a simultaneous equation model sem was applied through a weighted two stage least squares w2sls estimation method to different countries 21 cases with business relations over the period from q1 2000 to q4 2015 in the case of oil exporting countries consisting of iran russian federation uae indonesia and kazakhstan the findings revealed that they totally benefit from oil price increases in the case of oil importing countries the effects are more diverse to derive a better interpretation we divided them into four groups european union eu members germany italy the netherlands and poland east asian nations japan people s republic of china republic of korea viet nam taipei china singapore and hong kong china commonwealth of independent states cis ukraine and belarus and others the united states india and turkey the results showed that all these countries importing oil face a negative supply shock except turkey which benefits directly from an oil price shock furthermore the indirect effect coefficient received through trade for all these countries was positive

the impact of oil price shocks evidence from the industries of six oecd countries most of the studies about the macroeconomic consequences of oil price shocks have been focused on us aggregate data in contrast to these studies this paper empirically assesses the dynamic effect of oil price shocks on the output of the main manufacturing industries in six oecd countries the pattern of responses to an oil price shock by industrial output is diverse across the four european monetary union emu countries under consideration france germany italy and spain but broadly similar in the uk and the us moreover evidence on cross industry heterogeneity of oil shock effects within the emu countries is also reported

non linearities in the dynamics of oil prices abstract examining stationarity is of particular importance and represents the first step in empirical time series research non stationarity invalidates many of the results obtained from standard techniques and therefore requires special treatment because oil prices play an important role in affecting economic variables this paper examines the stationarity of real oil prices brent dubai wti and the world over the period 1973 2 2011 2 real oil prices are expressed in the currencies of seven asian countries indonesia japan korea malaysia the philippines singapore and thailand and in the u s dollar while using linear unit root tests without structural breaks shows no evidence of stationarity allowing for breaks shows very limited evidence of stationarity we argue that these results are attributed to the presence of nonlinearities in the behavior of oil prices testing for nonlinearity shows significant evidence of nonlinearity in all the cases with evidence of exponential smooth transition autoregression estar nonlinearity type in most cases applying unit root tests that account for two types of nonlinearities smooth transition and nonlinear deterministic trends reveals evidence of stationarity in all the cases

economic impact of oil price shocks on the turkish economy in the coming decades a dynamic cge analysis as a small open economy turkey depends on both imported oil and natural gas importing almost two thirds of its primary energy demand this paper analyzes the economic effects of oil price shocks for turkey as a small open oil and gas importing country to analyze the potential long term effects of oil price shocks on macroeconomic variables of interest including gdp consumer price inflation indirect tax revenues trade balance and carbon emissions we developed turgem d a dynamic multisectoral general equilibrium model for the turkish economy using turgem d we analyzed the impact of oil price shocks under three distinct scenarios reference high and low oil prices the simulation results show that these oil prices have very significant effects on macro indicators and carbon emissions in the turkish economy

stock prices of clean energy firms oil and carbon markets a vector autoregressive analysis recent discussions of energy security and climate change have attracted significant attention to clean energy we hypothesize that rising prices of conventional energy and or placement of a price on carbon emissions would encourage investments in clean energy firms the data from three clean energy indices show that oil prices and technology stock prices separately affect the stock prices of clean energy firms however the data fail to demonstrate a significant relationship between carbon prices and the stock prices of the firms

biological measures of the standard of living when economists investigate long term trends and socioeconomic differences in the standard of living or quality of life they have traditionally focused on monetary measures such as gross domestic product which has occupied center stage for over 50 years in recent decades however scholars have increasingly recognized the limitations of monetary measures while seeking useful alternatives this essay examines the unique and valuable contributions of four biological measures life expectancy morbidity stature and certain features of skeletal remains to understand levels and changes in human well being people desire far more than material goods and in fact they are quite willing to trade or give up material things in return for better physical or psychological health for most people health is so important to their quality of life that it is useful to refer to the biological standard of living biological measures may be especially valuable for historical studies and for other research circumstances where monetary measures are thin or lacking a concluding section ruminates on the future evolution of biological approaches in measuring happiness

growth and oil price a study of causal relationships in small pacific island countries this paper investigates the nexus between economic growth and oil price in small pacific island countries pics except papua new guinea none of the 14 pics has fossil any fuel resources consequently the other 13 pics are totally dependent on oil imports for their economic activities since pics have limited foreign exchange earning capacities as they have a very narrow range of exports and are highly dependent on foreign aid high oil prices in recent months have seriously tested their economic resilience this paper applies the ardl bounds testing methodology to four selected pics samoa solomon islands tonga and vanuatu which have consistent and reliable time series of data with a view to assess the impact of oil price on economic growth the findings are that oil price gross domestic product and international reserve are cointegrated in all the four pics further both in the long and short runs we observe that there is a uni directional relationship as causality linkage runs only from oil price and international reserves to economic growth the paper makes some policy recommendations

how does coal price drive up inflation reexamining the relationship between coal price and general price level in china abstract due to the coal dominated energy structure china is currently facing significant economic uncertainties brought forward by instability of coal price by separating the asymmetric effects that how upward and downward coal price changes pass through to the economy this paper reexamines the relationship between coal price and general price level in china the asymmetric effects are investigated via vector autoregression models granger causality tests and impulse response function analyses using the monthly time series data from jun 98 to sep 14 results show negative coal price change presents more significant impact on inflation than positive one the inflation responses very abruptly to coal price shock in the short run but the impact regresses rapidly along time accumulatively a 1 increase of coal price will push cpi and ppi up by 0 04 and 0 12 while a 1 decrease of coal price will pull them down by 0 08 and 0 17 respectively the linkage among coal price change ppi and cpi is demonstrated as the main transmission channel of price shock the inflationary effect is strong in the initial stage but will be weakened in the later stage since the pass through effect from ppi to cpi is tiny which confirms ppi is more responsive than cpi to coal price change for policy implications how to avoid extreme volatility in general price level is a major concern of recent agendas such as reforming energy market and building green fiscal system