IMF Working Papers

On the Sources and Consequences of Oil Price Shocks: The Role of Storage

By Deren Unalmis, Ibrahim Unalmis, Filiz D Unsal

November 8, 2012

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Deren Unalmis, Ibrahim Unalmis, and Filiz D Unsal. On the Sources and Consequences of Oil Price Shocks: The Role of Storage, (USA: International Monetary Fund, 2012) accessed November 24, 2024
Disclaimer: This Working Paper should not be reported as representing the views of the IMF.The views expressed in this Working Paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the IMF or IMF policy. Working Papers describe research in progress by the author(s) and are published to elicit comments and to further debate

Summary

Building on recent work on the role of speculation and inventories in oil markets, we embed a competitive oil storage model within a DSGE model of the U.S. economy. This enables us to formally analyze the impact of a (speculative) storage demand shock and to assess how the effects of various demand and supply shocks change in the presence of oil storage facility. We find that business-cycle driven oil demand shocks are the most important drivers of U.S. oil price fluctuations during 1982-2007. Disregarding the storage facility in the model causes a considerable upward bias in the estimated role of oil supply shocks in driving oil price fluctuations. Our results also confirm that a change in the composition of shocks helps explain the resilience of the macroeconomic environment to the oil price surge after 2003. Finally, speculative storage is shown to have a mitigating or amplifying role depending on the nature of the shock.

Subject: Commodities, Commodity price fluctuations, Economic theory, Inflation, Oil, Oil prices, Prices, Supply shocks

Keywords: Commodity price fluctuations, Demand shock, Global, Inflation, Oil, Oil demand, Oil demand shocks, Oil price fluctuations, Oil prices, Oil storage, Oil storage demand shock, Oil supply shock, Oil supply shocks speculative oil demand, Price of oil, Productivity shock, Sticky-price DSGE model, Storage demand shocks, Supply shocks, WP

Publication Details

  • Pages:

    41

  • Volume:

    ---

  • DOI:

    ---

  • Issue:

    ---

  • Series:

    Working Paper No. 2012/270

  • Stock No:

    WPIEA2012270

  • ISBN:

    9781475586367

  • ISSN:

    1018-5941