Exploring the inflationary effect of oil price in the US: A quantile regression approach over 1876-2014

The purpose of this paper is to explore the effect of oil price shocks on the US Consumer Price Index over the monthly period from 1876:01 to 2014:04.

The author uses the Bai and Perron (2003) structural break test to split the data sample into sub-periods delimited by the computed break dates. Afterwards, the author uses the quantile treatment effects over the full sample and then, by including sub-periods dummies to accommodate the selected structural breaks that drive the relationship between inflation and oil price growth.

The findings include a decreased transmission effect of oil price changes on inflation in recent years; a varied elasticity of inflation to the growth rate of oil prices across the distribution; and, finally, evidence of asymmetry in the relationship between the growth rate of oil prices and inflation, with a higher transmission mechanism for decreasing rather than increasing oil prices.

Policymakers should remain alert to monitoring potential inflation increases and should take precautionary measures to anchor inflation expectations, because inflation reacts differently to positive and negative oil price shocks. Moreover, authorities should consider the asymmetric reaction of inflation to oil price shocks to adopt an appropriate monetary policy strategy to achieve the price stability target.

The paper used a quantile regression model with structural breaks, which has not yet been used in the literature.