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Forecasting the Oil-gasoline Price Relationship: Should We Care about the Rockets and the Feathers?

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  • Bastianin, Andrea
  • Galeotti, Marzio
  • Manera, Matteo

Abstract

According to the Rockets and Feathers hypothesis (RFH), the transmission mechanism of positive and negative changes in the price of crude oil to the price of gasoline is asymmetric. Although there have been many contributions documenting that downstream prices are more reactive to increases than to decreases in upstream prices, little is known about the forecasting performance of econometric models incorporating asymmetric price transmission from crude oil to gasoline. In this paper we fill this gap by comparing point, sign and probability forecasts from a variety of Asymmetric-ECM (A-ECM) and Threshold Autoregressive ECM (TAR-ECM) specifications against a standard ECM. Forecasts from A-ECM and TAR-ECM subsume the RFH, while the ECM implies symmetric price transmission from crude oil to gasoline. We quantify the forecast accuracy gains due to incorporating the RFH in predictive models for the prices of gasoline and diesel. We show that the RFH is useless for point forecasting, while it can be exploited to produce more accurate sign and probability forecasts. Finally, we highlight that the forecasting performance of the estimated models is time-varying.

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  • Bastianin, Andrea & Galeotti, Marzio & Manera, Matteo, 2014. "Forecasting the Oil-gasoline Price Relationship: Should We Care about the Rockets and the Feathers?," Climate Change and Sustainable Development 165791, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM).
    • Handle: RePEc:ags:feemcl:165791
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.165791
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    Cited by:

    1. Bastianin, Andrea & Manera, Matteo, 2018. "How Does Stock Market Volatility React To Oil Price Shocks?," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 22(3), pages 666-682, April.
    2. Hamid Baghestani & Jorg Bley, 2020. "Do directional predictions of US gasoline prices reveal asymmetries?," Journal of Economics and Finance, Springer;Academy of Economics and Finance, vol. 44(2), pages 348-360, April.
    3. Kummer-Noormamode, Sabina, 2018. "The Relationship between Public Debt and Economic Growth: Nonlinearity and Country-Specificity," MPRA Paper 98075, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Andrea BASTIANIN & Matteo MANERA, 2015. "How Does Stock Market Volatility React to Oil Shocks?," Departmental Working Papers 2015-09, Department of Economics, Management and Quantitative Methods at Università degli Studi di Milano.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Resource /Energy Economics and Policy;

    JEL classification:

    • C22 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Time-Series Models; Dynamic Quantile Regressions; Dynamic Treatment Effect Models; Diffusion Processes
    • C46 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods: Special Topics - - - Specific Distributions
    • C52 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling - - - Model Evaluation, Validation, and Selection
    • C55 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling - - - Large Data Sets: Modeling and Analysis
    • E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles

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