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Working Paper
An international perspective on oil price shocks and U.S. economic activity
The effect of oil price shocks on U.S. economic activity seems to have changed since the mid-1990s. A variety of explanations have been offered for the seeming change?including better luck, the reduced energy intensity of the U.S. economy, a more flexible economy, more experience with oil price shocks and better monetary policy. These explanations point to a weakening of the relationship between oil prices shocks and economic activity rather than the fundamentally different response that may be evident since the mid-1990s.> ; Using a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model of world ...
Journal Article
Explaining stock price movements: is there a case for fundamentals?
Some observers have argued that the run-up in the Standard & Poor's 500 stock price index during the 1990s was due to irrational exuberance rather than market fundamentals. This article presents evidence that the case for market fundamentals is stronger than it appears on the surface. Nathan Balke and Mark Wohar show that movements in the price-dividend and price-earnings rations have exhibited substantial persistence, particularly since World War II. Hence, using the long-run historical average value of the price/earnings or price/dividend ratio as the "normal" valuation ratio is ...
Working Paper
The algebra of price stability
Journal Article
Understanding the price puzzle
Recent developments in measuring the stance of monetary policy have highlighted an interesting puzzle--namely, that an unexpected tightening in monetary policy leads to an increase rather than a decrease in the price level. In this article, Nathan Balke and Kenneth Emery present evidence on the price puzzle and discuss possible explanations for it. ; Balke and Emery find that the most plausible explanation is that, during the 1960s and '70s, monetary policy was not implemented in a way that fully offset inflationary supply shocks. During this period, monetary policy would tighten in response ...
Working Paper
The Shale Revolution and the Dynamics of the Oil Market
We build and estimate a dynamic, structural model of the world oil market in order to quantify the impact of the shale revolution. We model the shale revolution as a dramatic decrease in shale production costs and explore how the resultant increase in shale production affects the level and volatility of oil prices over our sample. We find that oil prices in 2018 would have been roughly 36% higher had the shale revolution not occurred and that the shale revolution implies a reduction in current oil price volatility around 25% and a decline in long-run volatility of over 50%.
Working Paper
The relative price effects of monetary shocks
We document the response of the individual components of the Producer Price Index (PPI) to commonly used measures of monetary shocks, and show that these responses are at variance with many widely-used ?macro? models of monetary non-neutrality. Monetary shocks are shown to have large relative price effects, resulting in an increase in the dispersion of the cross-section distribution of prices. Furthermore, in response to a contractionary (expansionary) monetary shock, a substantial number of prices tend to rise (fall). Most of the existing models of monetary nonneutrality are not capable of ...
Working Paper
Fuel subsidies, the oil market and the world economy
This paper studies the e ffects of oil producing countries' fuel subsidies on the oil market and the world economy. We identify 24 oil producing countries with fuel subsidies where retail fuel prices are about 34 percent of the world price. We construct a two-country model where one country represents the oil-exporting subsidizers and the second the oil-importing bloc, and calibrate the model to match recent data. We find that the removal of subsidies would reduce the world price of oil by six percent. The removal of subsidies is unambiguously welfare enhancing for the oil-importing ...
Journal Article
Supply shocks and the distribution of price changes
Since the early 1970s, economists have gained an increased appreciation for the importance of supply shocks as sources of fluctuations in aggregate economic activity. Yet the question of how best to measure such shocks remains open. Traditionally, economists have assessed the importance of such shocks by looking at such things as the relative prices of oil or agricultural commodities. Recently, however, it has been suggested that changes in the distribution of price changes for individual commodities may, in fact, be a superior indicator of changes in aggregate supply conditions. In this ...