Oil prices and U.S. aggregate economic activity: a question of neutrality

Stephen Brown and Mine Yucel

Economic and Financial Policy Review, 1999, issue Q II, 16-23

Abstract: Considerable research finds oil price shocks have had major effects on U.S. output and inflation. Several recent studies argue that the response of monetary policy-rather than the oil price shocks themselves-caused the fluctuations in economic activity. Stephen Brown and Mine Yucel show that an oil price increase will lead to a decline in real GDP and an increase in the price level that are of a similar magnitude if the federal funds rate is unconstrained-a finding consistent with the definition of monetary neutrality in which nominal GDP is constant. Brown and Yucel also find that holding the federal funds rate constant in the face of an oil price increase is an accommodative policy that boosts real GDP, the price level, and nominal GDP. In short, the monetary authority can use accommodative policy to cushion the negative effects of higher oil prices on real GDP, but at the expense of higher inflation.

Keywords: Inflation (Finance); Power resources - Prices; Gross domestic product (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1999
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (55)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.dallasfed.org/assets/documents/research/efr/1999/efr9902b.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.dallasfed.org/assets/documents/research/efr/1999/efr9902b.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://www.dallasfed.org/assets/documents/research/efr/1999/efr9902b.pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fip:fedder:y:1999:i:qii:p:16-23

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Economic and Financial Policy Review from Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Amy Chapman ().