If commercial producers or financial investors use futures contracts to hedge against commodity price risk, the arbitrageurs who take the other side of the contracts may receive compensation for their assumption of nondiversifiable risk in the form of positive expected returns from their...

Crude oil production in the United States increased by nearly 80 percent between 2008 and 2016, mostly in areas that were far from existing refining and pipeline infrastructure. The production increase led to substantial discounts for oil producers to reflect the high cost of alternative...

From 1997 through early 2003, the United Nations Oil for Food Program allowed Iraq to export oil in exchange for humanitarian supplies. We measure the extent to which this program was corrupted by Iraq's attempts to deliberately set the price of its oil below market prices in an effort to...

This paper constructs new estimates of the air pollution and greenhouse gas costs from long-distance movement of petroleum products by rail and pipelines. While crude oil transportation has generated intense policy debate about rail and pipeline spills and accidents, important externalities –...

The price of crude oil in the U.S. never exceeded $40 per barrel until mid-2004. By 2006 it reached$70, and in July 2008 it peaked at $145. By late 2008 it had plummeted to about $30 before increasingto $110 in 2011. Are speculators at least partly to blame for these sharp price changes? We...

This paper surveys the history of the oil industry with a particular focus on the events associated with significant changes in the price of oil. Although oil was used much differently and was substantially less important economically in the nineteenth century than it is today, there are...

We use a new micro data set that covers all oil fields in the world to estimate a stochastic industry-equilibrium model of the oil industry with two alternative market structures. In the first, all firms are competitive. In the second, OPEC firms act as a cartel. This effort is a first step...

This paper examines the factors responsible for changes in crude oil prices. The paper reviews the statistical behavior of oil prices, relates these to the predictions of theory, and looks in detail at key features of petroleum demand and supply. Topics discussed include the role of commodity...

This paper examines the effect of OPEC price increases on the welfare of a group of oil-importing industrial countries. It also studies how taxes or subsidies on oil imports or capital flows could alter the group's welfare. The analysis is conducted using a general-equilibrium model that...

For oil importers, differences in economic performance after the 1973-74 oil price increase and after the 1979-80 increase can be attributed to a number of factors, including the fact that the 1973-74 oil price increase was unexpected whereas the 1979-80 increase was largely expected. In this...