Oil price movements and the global economy: A model-based assessment

This paper develops a five-region version - Canada, a group of oil-exporting countries, the United States, emerging Asia, and Japan plus the euro area - of the global economy model encompassing production and trade of crude oil. In the presence of real adjustment costs that reduce the short- and medium-term responses of oil supply and demand, our simulations can account for large endogenous variations of oil prices with large effects on the terms of trade of oil-exporting versus oil-importing countries, and result in significant wealth transfers between regions. This is especially true when we consider a sustained increase in productivity growth or a shift in production technology toward more oil-intensive goods in regions such as emerging Asia. In addition, we study the implications of higher taxes on gasoline, showing that such a policy could increase world productive capacity while being consistent with a reduction in oil consumption.