All time cheaters versus cheaters in distress: An examination of cheating and oil prices in OPEC

This paper investigates the OPEC quota share system and whether there is any pattern to “cheating”. Using threshold cointegration methods, we examine each OPEC member's cheating behavior in periods of rising and falling real oil prices. Most OPEC members behave differently in response to rising oil prices than falling oil prices. For shocks of typical historical size, most members overproduce their quotas regardless of the direction of the real oil prices in the medium to long run. However, in response to large real oil price shocks, most members conform to a “public finance argument” whereby they underproduce their quotas in response to rising oil prices and overproduce in response to falling real oil prices. In an extended model with cheating by Saudi Arabia and other OPEC members, we find no statistically significant relationship between Saudi Arabian cheating and other cheating. The impulse response functions reveal that for typical shocks, neither Saudi Arabia nor other OPEC members absorb cheating by the other party. However, when there is a large incidence of cheating by other OPEC members, Saudi Arabia responds in kind: this forceful response is in line with a tit-for-tat strategy when there is “too much” cheating.     

The Effects of Industry Governance on Offshore Oil Development in the Gulf of Mexico

This article presents an historical analysis of the way governance arrangements in the petroleum industry have affected development of offshore oil resources in the Gulf of Mexico. Global competition over differential rents and natural value available from petroleum extraction were instrumental in the construction of oil prices high enough to support profitable investment offshore. Attention to the social construction of oil prices illustrates how political discourse on national security and conservation helps translate economic logic into strategic political coalitions and state action. The article shows how the unequal flow of resources in a global extractive industry, as organized by transnational corporations and states, interacts with marginal costs and differential rents to influence economic development. Development of Louisiana offshore oil after the second world war was protected by a private international price cartel, federally enforced import quotas and tax laws. Competition in the industry and the OPEC price increases of the 1970s undermined US domination of world oil, but higher oil prices further stimulated investment offshore. The subsequent breakdown of stable governance in the 1980s drove down oil prices, hastened restructuring of the petroleum industry and caused a rapid decline in Louisiana offshore investment.     

Toward efficiency in the crude-oil market

The ‘official’ (OPEC) prices of crude oil before the collapse in the oil market in the mid-1980s can be interpreted as contract prices and analysed on the basis of the theory of futures (or forward) markets. This paper uses the generalized method of moments estimation technique to test for efficiency in the relationship between the official prices and the ex-post spot prices at the time of delivery. Efficiency is rejected for the sample period 1978–1985 as a whole, but evidence is found of improvements over time. Further, the GMM Wald and Hansen tests, although asymptotically equivalent, are shown to differ greatly when applied to a small sample of monthly oil price data.     

The London Business School with Gower Publishing

Output has stagnated in the main industrialised countries this year but we expect the benefits of lower oil prices to show up in rapid growth from now on. The present weakness in the world economy stems from tighter US fiscal policy and the oil price shock itself. These have combined to reduce domestic demand in the United States, and hence to cut the market for Japanese exports in particular, and also to reduce expenditure by energydependent countries and companies. A further factor is that, with prices of oil-based products falling, there is an incentive to delay expenditure. We expect this impact effect of OPEC III to be short-lived and to give way to its positive effects in the second half of this year. Specifically, we expect consumer spending to lead the recovery as real incomes will be boosted by the terms of trade gain from lower oil prices - equivalent to 3 per cent of GNP in the OECD area as a whole. On the basis of oil prices holding at $15. we forecast OECD output growth of 3 per cent this year, rising to 41/2 per cent in 1987. Additionally, we expect lower oil prices to produce a significant reduction in world inflation. Zero growth of producer prices is forecast on average this year arid consumer price inflation is expected to fall to wards 2 per cent in the course of the year.     

Coping with oil price shocks - the case of Japan

The world economy has now suffered two major oil price shocks. Although the percentage increase in 1973-74 (OPEC I) was much larger than in 1979-80 (OPEC II). the potential effect on the level of world prices - and hence on the real economy - was about the same in each case. One lesson that was learned from OPEC I was that the impact of the oil price increase on individual economies depended on the policies followed by each country. For example, in the UK the inflation rate rose to 27 per cent in 1975 whereas in West Germany - which was just as dependent on imported oil - inflation rose to 7 per cent. In this Economic Viewpoint we consider the example of one country - Japan - which changed its policies between the two events. As a result it changed from being one of the least successful to being one of the most successful in coping with the oil price increase.     

财政货币政策、房价波动与宏观杠杆——基于信心传导机制的分析

利用市场主体信心的微观调查数据,借助仿真情景模拟下的反事实实验方法对信心能否在财政政策和货币政策调控杠杆与房价的过程中发挥作用进行实证分析,而后利用TVP-VAR模型对其内在机制展开深入探讨。研究表明,当信心被虚拟冲击抵消后,政策效果与基准结果呈现明显分化。即信心能够显著影响财政货币政策对杠杆与房价的作用效果,且经进一步实证分析得知信心正向影响于房价、负向影响于宏观杠杆。因此,政府在实施政策调控时,应注意市场预期的引导,在借助信心渠道强化房价调控政策效果的同时,也要关注信心对杠杆调控政策效果的干扰,并注意政策制定的连贯性与稳定性,以及财政货币政策的协调搭配。     

List price and sales prices of residential properties during booms and busts

This paper investigates the relationship between the list and sale price of residential properties over the housing cycle. In down or normal markets the list price generally exceeds the sales price; however, when the housing market is strong, homes sell for more than their list price. This observation is not consistent with the assumptions made in the standard model of home sellers’ search behavior. We consider alternative models. In one, sellers set list prices based on their expectations of future changes in sales prices and the arrival rate of buyers; however, demand shocks occur. This model partially explains our data from the Belfast, U.K. housing market, but it fails to predict the list to sales price ratio during a sustained housing boom. We next describe a model where sellers’ endogenously select their search mechanism depending on the strength of the housing market. We find support for the conjecture that sellers switch to an auction-like model during housing booms. There also is evidence that during a downturn in the market, sellers’ list prices are sticky.     

The London Business School with Gower Publishing

Collapsing oil prices and a falling dollar set the background to a Budget in which the Chancellor, hamstrung by lower oil revenues, was seen as having little room for manoeuvre. In fact the sharp fall in the sterling price of oil has provided him with the perfect excuse for not making significant cuts in personal income tax that were largely irrelevant to the needs of the economy. Instead of a boost to household demand we have had, thanks to OPEC, a transfer to companies in the form of a reduction in costs. This should enable them to expand output against a background of falling inflation. Our post-Budget assessment of macroeconomic prospects (Section I), made on the Treasury's assumption of a $15 oil price, shows output growing by 2 1/2 per cent this year and inflation falling below 3 per cent in 1987. We are thus less optimistic than the Treasury about output but more optimistic about inflation. How was the Chancellor able, within the confines of the Medium-Term Financial Strategy, to give anything away having lost so much oil revenue? A detailed analysis of the PSBR forecast (Section II) reveals good reasons why non-oil tax revenues should be some £3 1/2n higher than forecast this time last year. But, because we still expect public spending to be above the official figures, our PSBR forecast is £1bn higher than the Treasury's. Although the macroeconomic impact of the Budget was small (especially in relation to that of the fall in oil prices which preceded it), it continued the process of tax reform. We focus, in Section III, on the new proposals to deal with the problem of the pension fund surpluses to which we drew attention in the November issue of Financial Outlook. We conclude that the proposed measures could have a larger effect on tax revenues in the longer term than is indicated by the Treasury's Budget estimates.     

Monetary effects on nominal oil prices

The paper presents a theory of nominal asset prices for competitively owned oil. Focusing on monetary effects, with flexible oil prices the US dollar oil price should follow the aggregate US price level. But with rigid nominal oil prices, the nominal oil price jumps proportionally to nominal interest rate increases. We find evidence for structural breaks in the nominal oil price that are used to illustrate the theory of oil price jumps. The evidence also indicates strong Granger causality of the oil price by US inflation as is consistent with the theory.     

A new political economy of oil

Oil carries external costs which increase with depletion. In conventional visions for the next 20 years, oil supply will exceed demand in the premium market for transport fuel; competition between producers will drive capacity expansion (though with a risk of investment cycles); and natural gas will limit growth in oil demand and price. The politics of the climate, of transport, and of power supply, now rank with OPEC as key political factors affecting oil. Energy security has become more important to exporters than importers. Producers are threatened by the possibility that economically available oil will be left in the ground.     

Pricing Political Rallies

Why are political rallies free to attend? Fundraising is a central campaign activity and a perennial correlate of political victory. We argue that politicians set a zero price for rallies in order to reap a non‐pecuniary benefit: political support. An ‘allocation by waiting’ scheme selects those attendees with a lower opportunity cost of time relative to a standard ‘allocation by price’ scheme. Transactions costs mitigate Coasean bargaining by removing the secondary market, thereby altering the composition of the average rally crowd. This mechanism allows politicians to facilitate exchange with ‘general interests’: citizens who do not engage in rent seeking due to collective action costs but still stand to gain from redistributive policies.     

Co-movement of oil and stock prices in the GCC region: A wavelet analysis

This paper examines the short term and long term dependencies between stock market returns and OPEC basket oil returns for the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates) and two non-oil producing countries in the region (Egypt and Jordan), over the period 2002–2011. We utilize the wavelet coherency methodology in our empirical analyses. The empirical evidence indicates lack of market dependencies in the short term in these countries, indicating that oil and stock returns are not strongly linked in this interval. However, we show that oil returns and the stock markets returns co-move over the long term. The results also suggest that the long term dependencies are much stronger for OPEC oil returns and Jordan stock market returns relative to OPEC oil returns and Egypt stock market returns, implying a variation in the dependencies between oil prices and stock markets across countries. We further note an increasing strength in the market dependencies after 2007, signifying enhanced diversification benefit for investors in the short term relative to the long term.     

Spillovers and directional predictability between international energy commodities and their implications for optimal portfolio and hedging

This study sheds a new light on the dependence and the directional predictability between eight major energy price returns, using the Cross-Quantilogram (CQ) and the Partial CQ (PCQ) analysis. The energy prices cover the time series for the U.S. natural gas and seven internationally traded crude oil types. The results reveal a significant directional predictability running from most of energy commodities returns to the OPEC basket and the very light Tapis crude oil returns. However, the quantile predictability in both directions is enabled only for the relations between the light Brent and the light WTI, and between the OPEC basket and the Malaysian Tapis. The time-varying predictability analysis reveals that there is a significant upper quantile dependence between these international energy commodities. Finally, we find that the TAPIS can be a good hedging vehicle for other energy markets. These findings may be instructive for both policymakers (in terms of financial stability) and market participants (in terms of performance).     

WORLD OUTLOOK

After six years of steadily rising OECD output, fears of a significant rise in world inflation are now increasing. In the last year there has been a slight pick-up in inflation with producer prices up nearly d per cent. But prompt action by the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates before the presidential election appears to have damped inflationary expectations in the US and has given Japan and Germany an opportunity to tighten monetary policy without causing major currency fluctuations. It is also apparent that the other possible source of world inflation, commodity prices, is not a problem. OPEC over-production has ensured that the oil price remains weak and other commodity prices appear to have stopped rising after a brief acceleration at the beginning of the year. Nevertheless the major imbalances in world trade are declining only slowly and without a change in fiscal policy in the major economies it is difficult to believe that minor changes in monetary policy will be sufficient if the process of adjustment begins to falter. Despite these risks, we take a sanguine view of world prospects. Tighter monetary policy should effect a slowdown in world growth next year (already indicated by recent developments, particularly in the US) and this should be sufficient to control inflation which we expect to peak at just under 5 per cent at the beginning of next year. From 1990 onwards we see steady growth accompanied by low inflation.     

Price volatility and the political economy of resource-rich nations

This paper attempts to understand how price volatility affects the political transition of a resource-rich nation. Two states reflect price volatility: ‘high prices’ and ‘low prices’. We argue that whether or not political transition (i.e., a switch from one regime to another) will take place in a particular state depends critically on the kind of goods a country produces. If the main economic activity in a country is the extraction of “point-source” resources such as oil that demands capital-intensive production, the opportunity cost of switching the existing regime does not alter if the price of the resource changes but the benefit becomes more lucrative. Therefore, the incumbent group is most vulnerable during ‘high prices’. If the main economic activity of the nations is the production of “diffused resources” such as coffee that requires labor, prices do affect the opportunity cost. Nations concentrating in these commodities face acute political crisis during downturns.     

Do credit market imperfections justify a central bank׳s response to asset price fluctuations?

Do credit market imperfections justify a central bank׳s response to asset price fluctuations? This study addresses this question from the perspective of equilibrium determinacy. In the model we use, prices are sticky and the working capital of firms is subject to asset values because of a lack of commitment. If credit market imperfections exist to a small degree, the Taylor principle is a necessary and sufficient condition for equilibrium determinacy, and monetary policy response to asset price fluctuations is good from the perspective of equilibrium determinacy. However, if credit market imperfections exist to a large degree such that the collateral constraint is binding, then the Taylor principle no longer guarantees equilibrium determinacy, and monetary policy response to asset price fluctuations becomes a source of equilibrium indeterminacy. We find that the existence of credit market imperfections makes it unsuitable to initiate a monetary policy response to deal with asset price fluctuations. We also find that reductions in credit market imperfections can enlarge the indeterminacy region of the model parameters.     

Firm entry,product repositioning and welfare

We show that the entry of a second firm in a horizontally differentiated market (ala Hotelling) may harm consumers as prices increase and consumer’s surplus possibly decrease. We first derive the price and the consumer’s surplus of a monopoly which is located at the center of the market. When a second firm enters the market the first firm repositions and the two firms locate at their equilibrium points. Although competition adds to variety and increases consumer’s surplus, the post entry increase in price may outweight the gains from extra variety and make consumers worse off.     

Speculation in the Oil Market

The run‐up in oil prices since 2004 coincided with growing investment in commodity markets and increased price co‐movement among different commodities. We assess whether speculation in the oil market played a role in driving this salient empirical pattern. We identify oil shocks from a large dataset using a dynamic factor model. This method is motivated by the fact that a small‐scale vector autoregression is not informationally sufficient to identify the shocks. The main results are as follows. (i) While global demand shocks account for the largest share of oil price fluctuations, speculative shocks are the second most important driver. (ii) The increase in oil prices over the last decade is mainly driven by the strength of global demand. However, speculation played a significant role in the oil price increase between 2004 and 2008 and its subsequent collapse. (iii) The co‐movement between oil prices and the prices of other commodities is mainly explained by global demand shocks. Our results support the view that the recent oil price increase is mainly driven by the strength of global demand but that the financialization process of commodity markets also played a role. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Energy prices and aggregate economic activity: an interpretative survey

In this article, we survey the theory and evidence linking fluctuations in energy prices to those in aggregate economic activity. We then examine the implications of this research for both monetary policy and energy policy in response to oil price shocks. The currently available research seems to provide relatively reliable guidance for monetary policy. Because the precise channels through which oil price shocks affect economic activity are only partially known, however, research offers less guidance about how countries should design energy policy should cope with oil price shocks.     

石油价格冲击与宏观经济

本文首先讨论石油价格冲击的传导机制,然后考察石油价格冲击对经济增长和通货膨胀的非对称性影响,并分析石油价格上升的货币政策含义,最后提出了政策建议。