James Hamilton:
What do recent developments in Iraq imply for the price U.S. motorists should expect to pay for gasoline?
For the last two years I’ve been using a simple summary of the long-run relation (sometimes described as a “cointegrating relation”) between the U.S. retail price of gasoline and the price of crude oil. The relation implies that a $10 increase in the price of a barrel of Brent crude oil is typically associated with a 25 cent increase in the average U.S. retail price of a gallon of gasoline. The relation only captures the long-run tendency, and leaves out seasonal factors that for example brought the price of gasoline temporarily lower this last winter. But since this spring U.S. gasoline prices have moved back in line with what you’d expect given the long-run fundamentals.
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Average retail price of U.S. gasoline (black) and price predicted on the basis of price of Brent crude oil (blue). Black: average U.S. price of retail gasoline, all formulations, in dollars per gallon, weekly Jan 10, 2000 to June 16, 2014 (data source: EIA). Blue: 0.84 plus 0.025 times price of Brent, in dollars per barrel, weekly Jan 7, 2000 to Jun 13, 2014 (data source: EIA).
Here’s a little calculator courtesy of Political Calculations that you can use to get the predicted gasoline price plotted in blue in the graph above. Just enter the current price of Brent to see the implied long-run gasoline price. ...
via econbrowser.com