Does uncertainty about oil prices slow down the economy
It's not the latest jump in oil prices that takes a toll on the economy but the uncertainty over what will happen in the future. But getting a handle on such uncertainty is a difficult task.
Reviewing the Oil Price - GDP Growth Relationship: A Replication Study
This paper presents a thorough replication of Hamilton (2003) which in turn replicates and extends the findings of four seminal papers regarding the oil price–GDP growth relationship. Firstly, we replicate the empirical results obtained with the oil price measures of Hamilton (1983), Mork (1989), Lee et al. (1995), Hamilton (1996), and Hamilton (2003) by using an identical data set of real and nominal oil prices. Secondly, we extend the data sets to 2019Q4 and apply the same methodology. We find that for more recent data the explanatory power of the proposed oil price measures on GDP growth rates is still present, albeit on a slightly weaker magnitude. Extending the ARX(4), we only find little evidence that oil price decreases impact GDP growth rates on the full data set. Parameter stability tests suggest that the impact of oil price decreases might be limited to certain periods.
Complexity, Network-Decisions And Alternative Risk Premia: Some New Theories Of Structural Change And Portfolio Decisions.
Structural Change is the basis for many decisions such as government fiscal and monetary policies, government interventions, corporate-expenditure decisions, corporate strategic decisions, portfolio management decisions in finance; household allocation decisions, etc.. Structural change in industries and national economies is increasingly more difficult to detect partly because of the growth and dominance of Complex Systems and “Networks” in modern industries and economies – such Networks and Complex Systems include GVCs (global value chains), retail store networks; franchising networks; internet networks; services networks; credit-chains in industries; online social networks; etc.. The relationship between Complexity and Structural Change is well established in the physics, applied math and economic dynamics literatures. Traditional definitions and modeling of structural change have erroneously focused on changes in labor, technological progress, market share, and or capital – which are grossly inadequate in the new economy and post- global financial crisis (as confirmed by changes in the global retailing and housing industries and other industries). Also the modeling of structural change seems to be constrained by the availability of data, and often omits the relationship between structural change on one hand, and globalization, financial stability and international financial contagion. This article: i) introduces the Operations Strategy Model of structural change, explains how it differs from the Lewis Model of Structural Change; and explains the often omitted relationship between operations strategy (of companies and government agencies) and structural change; ii) introduces other new Complexity-based models/theories of Structural Change in industries; iii) reviews the relationships among Operations Research, Complexity and Structural Change; iv) explains the symbiotic relationship between structural change on one hand, and economic growth, financial stability, financial contagion and globalization; v) discusses the significant gap between academic research and practice and explains some issues and factors that should be considered in the development and testing of structural change models; vi) explains how alternative risk premia can be generated from new models of Structural Change.