The role of heterogeneous agents in fuel markets : testing tales of speculators in oil markets

This study investigates the role of heterogeneous agents in oil markets and tests tales of speculators in oil price formation. Results obtained from using a non-linear heterogeneous agent model suggest that oil market prices are driven by different groups of speculators, namely fundamentalists, chartists and the newly introduced contrarians. The latter enable us to disentangle stabilizing effects previously attributed solely to fundamentalists, and they are on average the most dominating group, whereas chartists exacerbate the huge price swings in 1990, 2008 and 2011. We also show how sensitive the model outcomes are to the specification of the fundamental value, what has strong economic implications.