IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/eneeco/v146y2025ics0140988325003329.html

Gasoline prices, gasoline price expectations, and inflation expectations in the United States

Author

Listed:
  • Vatsa, Puneet
  • Pino, Gabriel
  • Clements, Adam

Abstract

We analyze whether and to what extent gasoline price shocks influenced headline inflation, one-year gasoline price inflation expectations, and one-year inflation expectations in the United States using a partially identified Bayesian structural vector autoregression model. Results show that headline inflation and one-year inflation expectations increased instantaneously in response to gasoline price shocks, with the effects on one-year inflation expectations being considerably more persistent. The effects on one-year gasoline price inflation expectations were noticeably different. Although these expectations increased initially, they declined two months after the shock, with the effects dissipating shortly thereafter. Variance decomposition reveals that gasoline price shocks explained 66.18 %, 12.06 %, and 22.42 % of the variation in headline inflation, one-year gasoline price inflation expectations, and one-year inflation expectations, respectively.

Suggested Citation

  • Vatsa, Puneet & Pino, Gabriel & Clements, Adam, 2025. "Gasoline prices, gasoline price expectations, and inflation expectations in the United States," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 146(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:eneeco:v:146:y:2025:i:c:s0140988325003329
    DOI: 10.1016/j.eneco.2025.108508
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140988325003329
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.eneco.2025.108508?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lutz Kilian & Robert J. Vigfusson, 2011. "Are the responses of the U.S. economy asymmetric in energy price increases and decreases?," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 2(3), pages 419-453, November.
    2. Jacob A. Mincer & Victor Zarnowitz, 1969. "The Evaluation of Economic Forecasts," NBER Chapters, in: Economic Forecasts and Expectations: Analysis of Forecasting Behavior and Performance, pages 3-46, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Soren T. Anderson & Ryan Kellogg & James M. Sallee & Richard T. Curtin, 2011. "Forecasting Gasoline Prices Using Consumer Surveys," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(3), pages 110-114, May.
    4. Inoue, Atsushi & Kilian, Lutz, 2022. "Joint Bayesian inference about impulse responses in VAR models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 231(2), pages 457-476.
    5. Anderson, Soren T. & Kellogg, Ryan & Sallee, James M., 2013. "What do consumers believe about future gasoline prices?," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 66(3), pages 383-403.
    6. Lutz Kilian & Xiaoqing Zhou, 2022. "Oil prices, gasoline prices, and inflation expectations," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 37(5), pages 867-881, August.
    7. Kilian, Lutz & Zhou, Xiaoqing, 2023. "A broader perspective on the inflationary effects of energy price shocks," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 125(C).
    8. Christiane Baumeister & Lutz Kilian & Thomas K. Lee, 2017. "Inside the Crystal Ball: New Approaches to Predicting the Gasoline Price at the Pump," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 32(2), pages 275-295, March.
    9. Vatsa, Puneet & Pino, Gabriel, 2024. "Do petrol prices affect inflation and inflation expectations? Evidence from New Zealand," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 139(C).
    10. Christiane Baumeister & Lutz Kilian, 2016. "Lower Oil Prices and the U.S. Economy: Is This Time Different?," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 47(2 (Fall)), pages 287-357.
    11. Lutz Kilian & Clara Vega, 2011. "Do Energy Prices Respond to U.S. Macroeconomic News? A Test of the Hypothesis of Predetermined Energy Prices," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 93(2), pages 660-671, May.
    12. Kilian, Lutz & Zhou, Xiaoqing, 2022. "The impact of rising oil prices on U.S. inflation and inflation expectations in 2020–23," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 113(C).
    13. Binder, Carola Conces, 2018. "Inflation expectations and the price at the pump," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 1-18.
    14. Gonçalves, Sílvia & Herrera, Ana María & Kilian, Lutz & Pesavento, Elena, 2021. "Impulse response analysis for structural dynamic models with nonlinear regressors," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 225(1), pages 107-130.
    15. Lutz Kilian, 2009. "Not All Oil Price Shocks Are Alike: Disentangling Demand and Supply Shocks in the Crude Oil Market," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(3), pages 1053-1069, June.
    16. Christiane Baumeister & Lutz Killian, 2016. "Lower Oil Prices and the U.S. Economy: Is This Time Different?," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 47(2 (Fall)), pages 287-357.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Christina Anderl & Guglielmo Maria Caporale, 2025. "Gasoline Price Expectations as a Transmission Channel for Gasoline Price Shocks," CESifo Working Paper Series 11924, CESifo.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kilian, Lutz & Zhou, Xiaoqing, 2023. "Oil Price Shocks and Inflation," CEPR Discussion Papers 18416, Centre for Economic Policy Research.
    2. Gründler, Daniel & Scharler, Johann, 2025. "Does uncertainty amplify the inflation pass-through of gasoline price shocks?," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 144(C).
    3. Herrera, Ana María & Rangaraju, Sandeep Kumar, 2025. "The time-varying effects of oil news on inflation," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 152(C).
    4. An, Zidong & Binder, Carola & Sheng, Xuguang Simon, 2023. "Gas price expectations of Chinese households," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 120(C).
    5. Boeck, Maximilian & Zörner, Thomas O., 2025. "Natural gas prices, inflation expectations, and the pass-through to euro area inflation," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 141(C).
    6. Gründler, Daniel, 2024. "Does the inflation pass-through of gasoline price shocks depend on the level of inflation?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 243(C).
    7. Diaz, Elena Maria & Cunado, Juncal & de Gracia, Fernando Perez, 2024. "Global drivers of inflation: The role of supply chain disruptions and commodity price shocks," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 140(C).
    8. Diab, Sara & Karaki, Mohamad B., 2023. "Do increases in gasoline prices cause higher food prices?," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 127(PB).
    9. Martin Geiger & Johann Scharler, 2018. "How do consumers interpret the macroeconomic effects of oil price fluctuations? Evidence from U.S. survey data," Working Papers 2018-13, Faculty of Economics and Statistics, Universität Innsbruck.
    10. Hilde C. Bjørnland & Julia Skretting, 2024. "The shale oil boom and the US economy: Spillovers and time‐varying effects," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 39(6), pages 1000-1020, September.
    11. Vatsa, Puneet & Pino, Gabriel, 2024. "Do petrol prices affect inflation and inflation expectations? Evidence from New Zealand," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 139(C).
    12. Herrera, Ana María & Karaki, Mohamad B. & Rangaraju, Sandeep Kumar, 2019. "Oil price shocks and U.S. economic activity," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 129(C), pages 89-99.
    13. Kilian, Lutz & Zhou, Xiaoqing, 2022. "The impact of rising oil prices on U.S. inflation and inflation expectations in 2020–23," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 113(C).
    14. Benk, Szilard & Gillman, Max, 2023. "Identifying money and inflation expectation shocks to real oil prices," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 126(C).
    15. Jo, Yoon Joo & Klopack, Ben, 2025. "Fueling expectations: The causal impact of gas prices on Inflation Expectations," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 153(C).
    16. Lang, Korbinian & Auer, Benjamin R., 2020. "The economic and financial properties of crude oil: A review," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 52(C).
    17. Soma Patra, 2022. "Oil price shocks, firm entry and exit in a heterogeneous firm model," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 55(1), pages 349-378, February.
    18. George Kapetanios & Massimiliano Marcellino & Fabrizio Venditti, 2019. "Large time‐varying parameter VARs: A nonparametric approach," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 34(7), pages 1027-1049, November.
    19. Kilian, Lutz & Zhou, Xiaoqing, 2023. "A broader perspective on the inflationary effects of energy price shocks," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 125(C).
    20. Aidala, Felix & Armantier, Olivier & Koşar, Gizem & Somerville, Jason & Topa, Giorgio & van der Klaauw, Wilbert, 2024. "Gasoline price changes and consumer inflation expectations: Experimental evidence," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 220(C), pages 66-80.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:eneeco:v:146:y:2025:i:c:s0140988325003329. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/eneco .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.