The determinants of retail petrol prices in Greece

The purpose of this article is to examine the relationship between retail prices of petrol, international oil prices and tax rates in Greece. We examine not only the hypothesis that retail prices act asymmetrically to crude oil price changes and the pass-through rates of tax increases, but also use the cross-sectional dimension of the data to explore whether the existence or otherwise of market power affects retail prices. Our results provide little evidence for asymmetric behaviour. However, the degree to which prices overreact to tax changes and the significance of market power across the different regions suggests that the market for petrol/diesel is not very competitive.     

A wavelet decomposition approach to crude oil price and exchange rate dependence

This paper studies the relationship between oil prices and US dollar exchange rates using wavelet multi-resolution analysis. We characterized the oil price–exchange rate relationship for different timescales in an attempt to disentangle the possible existence of contagion and interdependence during the global financial crisis and analyze possible lead and lag effects. For crude oil prices and a range of currencies, we show that oil prices and exchange rates were not dependent in the pre-crisis period; however, we did find evidence of contagion and negative dependence after the onset of the crisis. Additionally, we found that oil prices led exchange rates and vice versa in the crisis period but not in the pre-crisis period. These findings have important implications for risk management, monetary policies to control oil inflationary pressures and fiscal policy in oil-exporting countries.     

Relationship between oil price and exchange rate by FDA and copula

This article investigates the relationship between daily crude oil prices and exchange rates. Functional data analysis is used to show the clustering pattern of exchange rates and oil prices over the time period through high dimensional visualizations. We select exchange rates for important currencies related to crude oil prices by using the objective Bayesian variable selection method. The selected sample data exhibits non-normal distribution with fat tails and skewness. Under the non-normality of the return series, we use copula functions that do not require to assume the bivariate normality to consider marginal distribution. In particular, our study applies the popular and powerful statistical methods such as Gaussian copula partial correlations and Gaussian copula marginal regression. We find evidence of significant dependence for all considered pairs, except for the Mexican peso-Brent. Our empirical results also show that the rise in the West Texas Intermediate (WTI) oil price returns is associated with a depreciation of the US dollar.     

The non-linear impact of oil price on the oil demand

ABSTRACT

A panel smooth transition regression model was adopted to analyse the non-linear impact of oil prices on oil demand. Data for 42 countries was obtained from the International Energy Agency for the time period spanning from January 1990 to June 2017. The results indicate that a threshold value does exist. Furthermore, when the oil price was lower than this threshold value, a positive relationship between oil price and oil demand was observed. When the price of oil was higher than the threshold value, however, a negative relationship between price and demand was found.     

Do net positions in the futures market cause spot prices of crude oil?

The last decade has witnessed sharp increases in the price of crude oil. There are two possible explanations for these increases: dramatic increases in financial firms' position in the oil futures market and recent increases in oil prices from changes in economic fundamentals. This paper examines the causal relationship between the net financial position and the crude oil price by using three types of Granger non-causality tests: the classical Granger non-causality test, a robust Granger non-causality test and a Granger non-causality test in quantiles. The empirical results provide some evidence of causality from the net financial position to the spot price of crude oil. In addition, futures prices serve as a transmission mechanism underlying the causal relationship between the net financial position and the crude oil price.     

Oil price risk in the Spanish stock market: An industry perspective

This study examines the sensitivity of the Spanish stock market at the industry level to movements in oil prices over the period 1993–2010, paying special attention to the presence of endogenously determined structural changes in the relationship between oil price changes and industry equity returns. The empirical results show that the degree of oil price exposure of Spanish industries is rather limited, although significant differences are found across industries. The oil price sensitivity is very weak in the 1990s, a period of fairly stable and low oil prices. Instead, the link between crude oil and stock prices seems to have increased during the 2000s, becoming primarily positive. This evidence highlights the key role played by aggregate demand-side oil price shocks associated with the global real economic activity in the link between oil price fluctuations and the Spanish stock market.     

基于ARIMA与GARCH模型的国际油价预测比较分析

在分析影响油价波动因素的基础上,利用1986年1月至2010年12月的WTI国际原油价格月度数据,分别建立ARIMA和GARCH模型对油价进行预测。并通过对2011年1月至2012年4月WTI原油价格进行外推预测,检验模型的预测效果。比较分析发现,在短期预测中,ARIMA和GARCH模型对油价的预测均比较准确,但当油价由于受到重大事件的影响而有较大波动时,模型的预测精度下降;在长期预测中,GARCH模型的预测效果优于ARIMA模型;整体来看,GARCH模型预测的精度高于ARIMA模型。因此,在国际油价预测中,用GARCH模型是比较合适的。     

Revisiting the oil price and stock market nexus: A nonlinear Panel ARDL approach

In this paper, we re-examine the relationship between oil price and stock prices in oil exporting and oil importing countries in the following distinct ways. First, we account for possible nonlinearities in the relationship in order to quantify the asymmetric response of stock prices of these two categories to positive and negative oil price changes. Secondly, in order to capture within group differences, we allow for heterogeneity effect in the cross-sections by formulating a nonlinear Panel ARDL model which is the panel data representation of the Shin et al. (2014) model and also analogous to the non-stationary heterogenous panel data model. Thirdly, we evaluate the relative predictability of the linear (symmetric) and nonlinear (asymmetric) Panel ARDL models using the Campbell and Thompson (2008) test. Our results depict that stock prices of both oil exporting and oil importing groups respond asymmetrically to changes in oil price although the response is stronger in the latter than the former. This finding is further corroborated by the out-of-sample forecast results suggesting that the inclusion of positive and negative oil price changes in the predictive model for stock prices will produce better forecast results only for the oil importing countries. Our results are robust to different oil price proxies, lag structure and in-sample periods. Overall, the dichotomy between oil exporting and oil importing countries has implications on oil price-stock nexus.     

Do oil price changes really matter to the trade balance? Evidence from Korea-ASEAN commodity trade data

The contribution of this article is to assess the effect of oil prices have on the trade balance in the framework of bilateral commodity trade data between Korea and each of the four ASEAN member countries—Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand. To examine this subject thoroughly, we first assume the effects of oil price changes to be symmetric and apply the linear autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) method to the subject. We find that the price of crude oil indeed has an important role in affecting Korea's trade balance with those four ASEAN economies in both the long- and short-run. We then separate oil price hikes from oil price plunges and implement the nonlinear ARDL method to reveal that there is evidence that changes in oil prices appear to have asymmetric effects on the trade balance for certain products in the long- and short-run.     

On the influence of US monetary policy on crude oil price volatility

Forecasting oil prices is not straightforward, such that it is convenient to build a confidence interval around the forecasted prices. To this end, the principal ingredient for obtaining a reliable crude oil confidence interval is its volatility. Moreover, accurate crude oil volatility estimation has fundamental implications in terms of risk management, asset pricing and portfolio handling. Generally, current studies consider volatility models based on lagged crude oil price realizations and, at most, one additional macroeconomic variable as crude oil determinant. This paper aims to fill this gap, jointly considering not only traditional crude oil driving forces, such as the aggregate demand and oil supply, but also the monetary policy rate. Thus, this work aims to contribute to the debate concerning the potential impact of (lagged) US monetary policy as well as the other crude oil future price (COFP) determinants on daily COFP volatility. By means of the recently proposed generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity mixed data sampling model, different proxies of the US monetary policy alongside US industrial production (proxy of the US aggregate demand) and oil supply are included in the COFP volatility equation. Strong evidence that an expansionary (restrictive) variation in monetary policy anticipates a positive (negative) variation in COFP volatility is found. We also find that a negative (positive) variation of industrial production increases (decreases) COFP volatility. This means that volatility behaves counter-cyclically, according to the literature. Furthermore, the out-of-sample forecasting procedure shows that including these additional macroeconomic variables generally improves the forecasting performance.     

How is China's coke price related with the world oil price? The role of extreme movements

This paper focuses on the relationship between the world oil price and China's coke price, particularly with respect to extreme movements in the world oil price. Based on a daily sample from 2009 to 2015 and the ARJI-GARCH models and copulas, our empirical results show that China's coke price and the world oil price are characterized by GARCH volatility and jump behaviors. Specifically, negative oil price shocks lead to falls in China's coke returns on the following day while positive oil prices have no significant effects. In addition, current coke returns positively respond to the very recent oil price jump intensity, and a time-varying and volatile lower tail dependence is found between the world oil price and China's coke price. Our results are expected to have implications for coke producers and users and policy makers.     

Inflation,oil price volatility and monetary policy

In a fully micro-founded New Keynesian framework, we characterize an analytical relationship between average inflation and oil price volatility by solving the rational expectations equilibrium of the model up to second order of accuracy. The model shows that higher oil price volatility induces higher levels of average inflation. We also show that when oil has low substitutability in the production function, the higher the weight the central bank assigns to inflation in the policy rule, the lower the level of average inflation is. The analytical solution further indicates that, for a given level of oil price volatility, average inflation is higher when marginal costs are convex in oil prices, the Phillips Curve is convex, and the degree of relative price dispersion is higher. The evolution of inflation during the 70s and 80s is consistent with the prediction of the model.     

Revisiting global economic activity and crude oil prices: A wavelet analysis

Based on the wavelet analysis approach, this paper firstly examines the dynamic relationship between global economic activity (proxied by the Kilian economic index) and crude oil prices in both time- and frequency-domains. Our empirical results demonstrate significant correlation between crude oil prices and global economic activity at high frequencies (in the short run) during the entire sample period; however, the co-movement between the two at low frequencies (in the long run) is weaker and exists only during certain proportions of the sample period. We also document evidence that global economic activity and oil price are positively correlated, with dynamic lead-lag relationships across time. Our findings are robust to alternative choices of oil price indexes and controlling for other confounding factors such as geopolitical risk, armed conflicts, economic policy uncertainty and equity market uncertainty. The current study provides valuable implications for oil market investors based on the information of global economic situation and its dynamic relationships with oil prices.     

Multifractal detrended cross-correlations between WTI crude oil price fluctuations and investor fear gauges

This article investigates the cross-correlations between WTI crude oil prices and fear gauges using cross-correlation statistic test and multifractal detrended cross-correlation analysis. The results show that the cross-correlations between crude oil prices and three different kinds of fear gauges are multifractal. By finding the ‘crossover’, we separate the three pairs of time series into the short term and long term, and find that cross-correlations of small fluctuations are persistent in the short and long terms, cross-correlations of large fluctuations are strongly anti-persistent in the short and long terms. The relationship is useful to profit in future markets.     

Asymmetric evidence of gasoline price responses in France: A Markov-switching approach

It has been documented that retail gasoline prices respond more quickly to increases in wholesale prices than they do to decreases in wholesale prices. However, there is little empirical evidence that identifies the link between the pass-through of oil prices to gasoline in different volatility regimes. Using a Markov-switching model on weekly observations of fuel prices from 1990 to 2011, we find that fuel prices respond significantly faster to increases in crude oil prices than to decreases in crude oil prices. However, when volatility is low, the transmittal of a price change from crude oil to retail fuel is higher compared to periods of high volatility. These results provide important information on the behavior of retailers. The findings of this paper therefore provide clues for better understanding the recent dynamics of fuel prices and some policy implications.     

On the relationship between oil price and exchange rates: A wavelet analysis

We may find numerous works in the existing literature regarding the cohesion between oil prices and exchange rates, yet an exact shape of the relationship remains undefined. By restoring to wavelet analysis and using a rich database from Japan, this study contributes to the literature by investigating the said relationship within the time–frequency space. Over the time horizon, it is being established that the strength of the relationship between oil price and exchange rate keeps changing. If the Bank of Japan needs to control the exchange rate, it should give proper importance to shocks on oil prices, while formulating exchange rate policy.     

Competition and petrol pricing in the smartphone era: Evidence from Singapore

This paper examines how pre-tax petrol and diesel prices in Singapore respond to changes in crude oil prices using an asymmetric error correction model. We pay particular attention to the effect increased use of smartphones may have had in altering the pattern of price adjustment as consumers become more informed about fuel prices and as search costs decline. The results suggest that increases in the use of smartphones and tablets have increased the estimated short-term response rate but only for the adjustment of retail prices to decreases in crude oil prices. We find no evidence of a smartphone effect for wholesale prices indicative of the different roles played by consumers in competition.     

Energy price shocks and milk price adjustments

Much previous research on energy price transmission sheds light on the relationship between oil prices and aggregate commodity prices, such as for agricultural products, or food price indexes. This letter uses data from 12 U.S. cities between 2001 and 2011 to examine how energy prices are transmitted to fluid milk products at the retail level. Results indicate the existence of an asymmetric energy pass-through (a rise is transmitted faster than a fall in prices) and that private label milk products are more insulated from energy price shocks and adjust at similar rate with national manufacturer brands.     

Taxation and the asymmetric adjustment of selected retail energy prices in the UK

This paper investigates the adjustment of the prices of four key petroleum products in the UK following changes in the price of crude oil. We find significant evidence that the pre-tax prices of diesel, kerosene, and gas oil adjust more rapidly in an upward than a downward direction, but that the pre-tax price of unleaded petrol adjusts symmetrically. However, these patterns are obscured at the pump once one accounts for fuel duty and value-added tax, raising the possibility that firms can use the tax system to conceal rent-seeking behaviour.     

考虑价格因素的原油进口多元化路径研究

价格风险是我国原油进口面临的主要风险之一,通过构建我国原油进口的价格-风险模型,量化研究了我国原油进口来源国的最优风险结构。结论显示,中东地区依然是我国最重要的原油进口来源地,进口更多来自政治稳定地区的原油,可以有效地分散我国原油的供应风险。从长期来看,我国需要积极拓展更多的石油供应渠道,进一步提高从阿联酋、美国、澳大利亚、加拿大、哈萨克斯坦、埃及以及卡塔尔的进口量,保证我国的原油进口安全。