This paper makes the following original contributions to the literature. (1) We develop a simpler analytical characterization and numerical algorithm for Bayesian inference in structural vector autoregressions that can be used for models that are overidentified, just-identified, or...

Some observers have conjectured that oil supply shocks in the United States and in other countries are behind the plunge in the price of oil since June 2014. Others have suggested that a major shock to oil price expectations occurred when in late November 2014 OPEC announced that it would...

Some observers have conjectured that the decline in the price of oil after June 2014 resulted from positive oil supply shocks in the second half of 2014. Others have suggested that a major shock to oil price expectations occurred when in late November 2014 OPEC announced that it would maintain...

We investigate how the dynamic effects of oil supply shocks on the US economy have changed over time. We first document a remarkable structural change in the oil market itself, i.e. a considerably steeper, hence, less elastic oil demand curve since the mid-eighties. Accordingly, a typical oil...

The substantial variation in the real price of oil since 2003 has renewed interest in the question of how to forecast monthly and quarterly oil prices. There also has been increased interest in the link between financial markets and oil markets, including the question of whether financial market...

The answer depends on the objective. The approach of combining five of the leading forecasting models with equal weights dominates the strategy of selecting one model and using it for all horizons up to two years. Even more accurate forecasts, however, are obtained when allowing the forecast...

Notwithstanding a resurgence in research on out-of-sample forecasts of the price of oil in recent years, there is one important approach to forecasting the real price of oil which has not been studied systematically to date. This approach is based on the premise that demand for crude oil derives...

Futures markets are a potentially valuable source of information about market expectations. Exploiting this information has proved difficult in practice, because the presence of a timevarying risk premium often renders the futures price a poor measure of the market expectation of the price of...

Recent research has shown that recursive real-time VAR forecasts of the real price of oil tend to be more accurate than forecasts based on oil futures prices of the type commonly employed by central banks worldwide. Such monthly forecasts, however, differ in several important dimensions from the...

U.S. retail food price increases in recent years may seem large in nominal terms, but after adjusting for inflation have been quite modest even after the change in U.S. biofuel policies in 2006. In contrast, increases in the real prices of corn, soybeans, wheat and rice received by U.S. farmers...