Search Results
Working Paper
The US Banks’ Balance Sheet Transmission Channel of Oil Price Shocks
We document the existence of a quantitative relevant banks' balance-sheet transmission channel of oil price shocks by estimating a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with banking and oil sectors. The associated amplification mechanism implies that those shocks explain a non-negligible share of US GDP growth fluctuations, up to 17 percent, instead of 6 percent absent the banking sector. Also, they mitigated the severity of the Great Recession’s trough. GDP growth would have been 2.48 percentage points more negative in 2008Q4 without the beneficial effect of low oil prices. The ...
Working Paper
Oil Price Fluctuations, US Banks, and Macroprudential Policy
Using US micro-level data on banks, we document a negative effect of high oil prices on US banks' balance sheets, more negative for highly leveraged banks. We set and estimate a general equilibrium model with banking and oil sectors that rationalizes those findings through the financial accelerator mechanism. This mechanism amplifies the effect of oil price shocks, making them non-negligible drivers of the dynamics of US banks' intermediation activity and of the US real economy. Macroprudential policy, in the form of a countercyclical capital buffer, can meaningfully address oil price ...
Working Paper
Oil Price Fluctuations and US Banks
We document a sizable effect of oil price fluctuations on US banking variables by estimating an SVAR with sign restrictions as in Baumeister and Hamilton (2019). We find that oil market shocks that lead to a contraction in world economic activity unambiguously lower the amount of bank credit to the US economy, tend to decrease US banks' net worth, and tend to increase the US credit spread. The effects can be strong and long-lasting, or more modest and short-lived, depending on the source of the oil price fluctuations. The effects are stronger for smaller and lower leveraged banks.
Working Paper
Boom Town Business Dynamics
The shale oil and gas boom in the U.S. provides a unique opportunity to study economic growth in a "boom town" environment, to derive insights about economic expansions more generally, and to obtain clean identification of the causal effects of economic growth on specific margins of business adjustment. The creation of new business establishments--separate from the expansion of existing establishments--accounts for a disproportionate share of the multi-industry employment growth sparked by the shale boom, an intuitive but not inevitable empirical result that is broadly consistent with ...
Working Paper
Reasons Behind Words: OPEC Narratives and the Oil Market
We analyze the content of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) communications and whether it provides information to the crude oil market. To this end, we derive an empirical strategy which allows us to measure OPEC's public signal and test whether market participants find it credible. Using Structural Topic Models, we analyze OPEC narratives and identify several topics related to fundamental factors, such as demand, supply, and speculative activity in the crude oil market. Importantly, we find that OPEC communication reduces oil price volatility and prompts market ...