Search Results
Journal Article
Ethanol: economic gain or drain?
Corn-based ethanol can make a dent in demand for oil, but at what price? Food costs go up. Environmental damage worsens. If oil prices fall, ethanol production will probably collapse-as it did 20 years ago.
Journal Article
Oil and gas rises again in a diversified Texas
The oil and gas industry has been a driver of the Texas economy for the past 40 years. Its contribution declined with the oil-led recession of 1986 and appeared to slip further in the 1990s as the high-tech industry boomed. But oil and natural gas prices have risen since 1999, reaching record highs in 2008. This resurgence has boosted energy activity and factored into the recent economic recovery in Texas, affirming the industry?s long-held prominence in the state. ; An econometric model developed by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas documents the state?s evolving energy fortunes since the ...
Journal Article
Amber waves of biodiesel
Though growing, renewable fuel isn?t likely to help save rural economies or kick an oil habit.
Working Paper
Time-varying oil price volatility and macroeconomic aggregates
We illustrate the theoretical relation among output, consumption, investment, and oil price volatility in a real business-cycle model. The model incorporates demand for oil by a firm, as an intermediate input, and by a household, used in conjunction with a durable good. We estimate a stochastic volatility process for the real price of oil over the period 1986?2011 and utilize the estimated process in a nonlinear approximation of the model. For realistic calibrations, an increase in oil price volatility produces a temporary decrease in durable spending, while precautionary savings motives lead ...
Working Paper
Explaining the energy consumption portfolio in a cross-section of countries: are the BRICs different?
This paper uses disaggregated data from a broad cross-section of countries to empirically assess differences in energy consumption profiles across countries. We find empirical support for the energy ladder hypothesis, which contends that as an economy develops it transits away from a heavier reliance on traditional fuel sources towards an increase in the use of modern commercial energy sources. We also find empirical support for the hypothesis that structural transformation--the idea that as an economy matures, it transforms away from agriculture-based activity into industrial activity and, ...
Speech
Energy and the U.S. macro economy
Wilmington Club, Wilmington, Del., July 24, 2007
Journal Article
Putting a price on carbon
To address global warming, most economists favor a focus on prices, not quantities.
Working Paper
Energy Consumption and Inequality in the U.S.: Who are the Energy Burdened?
Using a broad definition of energy consumption that includes both residential energy use and gasoline for transport, we identify 20% of households in the PSID as energy burdened (EB) based on a twice-the-median, income-based threshold. Logit analysis shows that being nonwhite, being single with dependents, receiving public assistance, having no post-secondary education, and being unemployed increase the probability of being EB. We document four key empirical facts: (1) EB/non-EB status is persistent; (2) EB households have significantly higher marginal propensities to consume and marginal ...
Newsletter
Household energy expenditures, 1982–2005
While energy's share of total expenditures has risen in recent years, it remains below the shares seen in the early and mid-1980s. Furthermore, the impact of the price increases on a household differs, based on the household's specific energy consumption patterns.
Journal Article
Energy and the economy