IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cpr/ceprdp/6255.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Retail Energy Prices and Consumer Expenditures

Author

Listed:
  • Kilian, Lutz
  • Edelstein, Paul

Abstract

In the absence of a major disruption in spending by consumers and firms, the effects of energy price shocks on the economy will be small. In this paper, we quantify the direct effect on real consumption of (1) unanticipated changes in discretionary income, (2) shifts in precautionary savings, and (3) changes in the operating cost of energy-using durables. We also evaluate the evidence for asymmetries in the response of real consumption that would be expected, for example, if shifting expenditure patterns cause sectoral reallocations. While we do find evidence of changing expenditure patterns based on a detailed analysis of more than 130 expenditure items, there is no compelling evidence for an allocative effect on consumer spending, aggregate unemployment, or consumer expectations. The absence of such an effect, despite a comparatively large effect of energy price shocks on the consumption of new domestically produced automobiles, is consistent with the small share of the U.S. auto industry in domestic real GDP and employment. It is also consistent with the symmetric behavior of real consumption in 1979 (when energy prices rose sharply) and in 1986 (when they fell equally sharply). This finding has important implications for theoretical models of the transmission of energy price shocks. Our analysis also sheds light on the declining importance of energy price shocks for the U.S. economy. We not only document the extent to which consumption aggregates have become less responsive to energy price shocks since the mid-1980s, but we trace the declining importance of energy price shocks relative to the 1970s to changes in the composition of U.S. automobile production and the declining overall importance of the U.S. automobile sector.

Suggested Citation

  • Kilian, Lutz & Edelstein, Paul, 2007. "Retail Energy Prices and Consumer Expenditures," CEPR Discussion Papers 6255, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:6255
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cepr.org/publications/DP6255
    Download Restriction: CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hamilton, James D., 1996. "This is what happened to the oil price-macroeconomy relationship," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(2), pages 215-220, October.
    2. Hillard G. Huntington, 1998. "Crude Oil Prices and U.S. Economic Performance: Where Does the Asymmetry Reside?," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 4), pages 107-132.
    3. Pindyck, Robert S, 1991. "Irreversibility, Uncertainty, and Investment," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 29(3), pages 1110-1148, September.
    4. Hooker, Mark A, 2002. "Are Oil Shocks Inflationary? Asymmetric and Nonlinear Specifications versus Changes in Regime," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 34(2), pages 540-561, May.
    5. Ben S. Bernanke, 1983. "Irreversibility, Uncertainty, and Cyclical Investment," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 98(1), pages 85-106.
    6. Edelstein Paul & Kilian Lutz, 2007. "The Response of Business Fixed Investment to Changes in Energy Prices: A Test of Some Hypotheses about the Transmission of Energy Price Shocks," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 7(1), pages 1-41, November.
    7. 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.
    8. Nathan S. Balke & Stephen P.A. Brown & Mine K. Yucel, 2002. "Oil Price Shocks and the U.S. Economy: Where Does the Asymmetry Originate?," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 3), pages 27-52.
    9. Mork, Knut Anton, 1989. "Oil and Macroeconomy When Prices Go Up and Down: An Extension of Hamilton's Results," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 97(3), pages 740-744, June.
    10. Hooker, Mark A., 1996. "This is what happened to the oil price-macroeconomy relationship: Reply," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(2), pages 221-222, October.
    11. Davis, Steven J, 1987. "Allocative Disturbances and Specific Capital in Real Business Cycle Theories," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 77(2), pages 326-332, May.
    12. Davis, Steven J. & Haltiwanger, John, 2001. "Sectoral job creation and destruction responses to oil price changes," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(3), pages 465-512, December.
    13. Bresnahan, Timothy F & Ramey, Valerie A, 1993. "Segment Shifts and Capacity Utilization in the U.S. Automobile Industry," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(2), pages 213-218, May.
    14. Kilian, Lutz, 2001. "Impulse Response Analysis in Vector Autoregressions with Unknown Lag Order," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 20(3), pages 161-179, April.
    15. Michael Dotsey & Max Reid, 1992. "Oil shocks, monetary policy, and economic activity," Economic Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, vol. 78(Jul), pages 14-27.
    16. Christopher L. House & Matthew D. Shapiro, 2008. "Temporary Investment Tax Incentives: Theory with Evidence from Bonus Depreciation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(3), pages 737-768, June.
    17. Lee, Kiseok & Ni, Shawn, 2002. "On the dynamic effects of oil price shocks: a study using industry level data," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(4), pages 823-852, May.
    18. Kilian, Lutz & Edelstein, Paul, 2007. "The Response of Business Fixed Investment to Changes in Energy Prices: A Test of Some Hypotheses About the Transmission of Ener," CEPR Discussion Papers 6507, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    19. Hamilton, James D, 1988. "A Neoclassical Model of Unemployment and the Business Cycle," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 96(3), pages 593-617, June.
    20. Yash P. Mehra & Jon D. Petersen, 2005. "Oil prices and consumer spending," Economic Quarterly, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, vol. 91(Sum), pages 51-70.
    21. Igal Hendel & Paolo Dudine & Alessandro Lizzeri, 2006. "Storable Good Monopoly: The Role of Commitment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(5), pages 1706-1719, December.
    22. Hooker, Mark A., 1996. "What happened to the oil price-macroeconomy relationship?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(2), pages 195-213, October.
    23. Lutz Kilian, 1998. "Small-Sample Confidence Intervals For Impulse Response Functions," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 80(2), pages 218-230, May.
    24. Pinelopi Koujianou Goldberg, 1998. "The Effects of the Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency Standards in the US," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(1), pages 1-33, March.
    25. Kilian, Lutz & Davis, Lucas W, 2007. "The Allocative Cost of Price Ceilings: Lessons to be Learned from the US Residential Market for Natural Gas," CEPR Discussion Papers 6142, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    26. Dahl, Carol & Sterner, Thomas, 1991. "Analysing gasoline demand elasticities: a survey," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 13(3), pages 203-210, July.
    27. Ivanov Ventzislav & Kilian Lutz, 2005. "A Practitioner's Guide to Lag Order Selection For VAR Impulse Response Analysis," Studies in Nonlinear Dynamics & Econometrics, De Gruyter, vol. 9(1), pages 1-36, March.
    28. Peter C. Reiss & Matthew W. White, 2005. "Household Electricity Demand, Revisited," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 72(3), pages 853-883.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Lutz Kilian, 2008. "The Economic Effects of Energy Price Shocks," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 46(4), pages 871-909, December.
    2. 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).
    3. Edelstein, Paul & Kilian, Lutz, 2009. "How sensitive are consumer expenditures to retail energy prices?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(6), pages 766-779, September.
    4. Lutz Kilian, 2009. "Pitfalls in Estimating Asymmetric Effects of Energy Price Shocks," 2009 Meeting Papers 473, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    5. Claudio Morana, 2013. "The Oil Price-Macroeconomy Relationship Since the Mid-1980s: A Global Perspective," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 3).
    6. Lescaroux, François, 2008. "Une revue interprétée des élasticités entre le PIB et le prix du pétrole," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 84(4), pages 415-447, Décembre.
    7. Kilian, Lutz & Edelstein, Paul, 2007. "The Response of Business Fixed Investment to Changes in Energy Prices: A Test of Some Hypotheses About the Transmission of Ener," CEPR Discussion Papers 6507, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    8. John Elder & Apostolos Serletis, 2010. "Oil Price Uncertainty," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 42(6), pages 1137-1159, September.
    9. 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.
    10. Herrera, Ana María & Lagalo, Latika Gupta & Wada, Tatsuma, 2015. "Asymmetries in the response of economic activity to oil price increases and decreases?," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 108-133.
    11. Jaime Casassus & Freddy Higuera, 2011. "Stock Return Predictability and Oil Prices," Documentos de Trabajo 406, Instituto de Economia. Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile..
    12. Aktham I. Maghyereh & Basil Awartani & Osama D. Sweidan, 2019. "Oil price uncertainty and real output growth: new evidence from selected oil-importing countries in the Middle East," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 56(5), pages 1601-1621, May.
    13. Christiane Baumeister & Gert Peersman, 2013. "Time-Varying Effects of Oil Supply Shocks on the US Economy," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 5(4), pages 1-28, October.
    14. Bunce, Alan & Carrillo-Maldonado, Paul, 2023. "Asymmetric effect of the oil price in the ecuadorian economy," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 124(C).
    15. Maravalle, Alessandro, 2010. "The role of the terms of trade in the trade channel of transmission of oil price shocks," DFAEII Working Papers 1988-088X, University of the Basque Country - Department of Foundations of Economic Analysis II.
    16. Hamilton, James D., 2003. "What is an oil shock?," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 113(2), pages 363-398, April.
    17. Knotek, Edward S. & Zaman, Saeed, 2021. "Asymmetric responses of consumer spending to energy prices: A threshold VAR approach," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(C).
    18. Rajesh H. Acharya & Anver C. Sadath, 2018. "Revisiting the relationship between oil price and macro economy: Evidence from India," ECONOMICS AND POLICY OF ENERGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT, FrancoAngeli Editore, vol. 2018(1), pages 173-190.
    19. Marc Gronwald, 2012. "Oil and the U.S. Macroeconomy: A Reinvestigation Using Rolling Impulse Responses," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 4).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Asymmetry; Consumer sentiment; Consumption; Energy prices; Price elasticity of energy demand; Purchasing power;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
    • Q43 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy - - - Energy and the Macroeconomy

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:cpr:ceprdp:6255. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cepr.org .

    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.