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...

The security of energy supply is a key geopolitical factor in the relationship between the European Union and the southern neighborhood countries of the Middle East and North Africa region. We study the response of eight Mediterranean economies to exogenous oil supply shocks. We focus on the...

This paper examines the relationship between biofuels and commodity food prices in the U.S. from a new perspective. While a large body of literature has tried to explain the linkages between sample means and volatilities associated with ethanol and agricultural price returns, little is known...

We analyze the relationship between the prices of ethanol, agricultural commodities and livestock in Nebraska, the U.S. second largest ethanol producer. The paper focuses on long-run relations and Granger causality linkages between ethanol and the other commodities. The analysis takes possible...

Call centers' managers are interested in obtaining accurate forecasts of call arrivals because these are a key input in staffing and scheduling decisions. Therefore their ability to achieve an optimal balance between service quality and operating costs ultimately hinges on forecast accuracy. We...

We study the effects of crude oil price shocks on the stock market volatility of the G7 economies. We rely on a structural VAR model to identify the causes underlying the oil price shocks and gauge the differential impact that oil supply and oil demand innovations have on financial volatility....