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Research Department Working Papers

Geopolitical Oil Price Risk and Economic Fluctuations

No. 2403 (Revised November 2024)
Lutz Kilian, Michael D. Plante and Alexander W. Richter

Abstract: This paper studies the general equilibrium effects of time-varying geopolitical risk in the oil market by simultaneously modeling downside risk from disasters, oil storage and the endogenous determination of oil price and macroeconomic uncertainty in the global economy. Notwithstanding the attention geopolitical events in oil markets have attracted, we find that geopolitical oil price risk is not a major driver of global macroeconomic fluctuations. Even when allowing for the possibility of an unprecedented 20 percent drop in global oil production, it takes a large increase in the probability of such a disaster to cause a sizable recessionary impact.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.24149/wp2403r1

Original paper

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