by Doly » Fri 30 Nov 2007, 08:52:01
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')Second, that the most important route through which oil prices affect output is monetary policy: when oil prices pass through to core inflation, monetary authorities raise interest rates, slowing growth. It is argued that the direct effect of high oil prices on output is relatively small and that the microeconomic mechanisms proposed in the literature are insufficient to explain the historical impact of oil prices. Based on the second argument, the third argument is that high oil prices have not reduced growth in the past three years because they no longer pass through to core inflation, so the monetary tightening previously seen in response to high oil prices is absent.
He has one thing right: the main reason that oil prices caused rampant inflation in the past was monetary policy. However, that doesn't mean there isn't a problem.
What I think high oil prices trigger is stagflation. (Have you read economics news lately? It looks like stagflation is raising its ugly head again.) Monetary policy can help choose how much is the recession component and how much is the inflation component. This time round, the Fed and central banks elsewhere have been very careful to avoid rampant inflation... and they are leading us into what looks like may become a very black depression.
The reason high oil prices cause stagflation is simple:
1) They cause inflation because almost everything is transported, and rising oil prices lead to rising prices on almost everything else.
2) They cause recession because it's just more difficult to produce anything if moving things around becomes more difficult. Which leads to reduced production of almost everything.
Both these effects may not show up immediately, things take time to percolate through the economy.
If central banks choose to keep interest rates high, it's expected to curb inflation but it actually doesn't work, because the rise in prices is led by something that is imported, not done locally. So prices keep going up anyway, people start demanding higher salaries, and the inflation spiral continues.
If central banks choose to keep interest rates low, it's expected to avoid recession but again it doesn't work, because you can't change the fact that costs of production are going up while the purchasing power of people isn't increasing (they are also paying high fuel prices). The difference with the above scenario is that individuals and companies are encouraged to borrow to cover for the fact that their incomings aren't covering their outgoings. So people borrow instead of asking for higher salaries, and companies borrow instead of rising the prices for their products, and inflation stays reasonably low. Of course, this is unsustainable. But nothing seems to be going wrong until the debt bubble explodes.
In short, the effect you get is just the opposite of classic economic theory: high interest rates will lead to more inflation, and low interest rates will lead to more recession. This is because classic economic theory assumes that imports and exports are not a major part of the economy. These "counterintuitive" effects happen because it's an imported commodity what's causing you trouble.
I'm pretty sure this outlines what economic textbooks of the future will have to say on this matter.