IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/imf/imfwpa/2015-251.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Forecasting the Nominal Brent Oil Price with VARs—One Model Fits All?

Author

Listed:
  • Benjamin Beckers
  • Samya Beidas-Strom

Abstract

We carry out an ex post assessment of popular models used to forecast oil prices and propose a host of alternative VAR models based on traditional global macroeconomic and oil market aggregates. While the exact specification of VAR models for nominal oil price prediction is still open to debate, the bias and underprediction in futures and random walk forecasts are larger across all horizons in relation to a large set of VAR specifications. The VAR forecasts generally have the smallest average forecast errors and the highest accuracy, with most specifications outperforming futures and random walk forecasts for horizons up to two years. This calls for caution in reliance on futures or the random walk for forecasting, particularly for near term predictions. Despite the overall strength of VAR models, we highlight some performance instability, with small alterations in specifications, subsamples or lag lengths providing widely different forecasts at times. Combining futures, random walk and VAR models for forecasting have merit for medium term horizons.

Suggested Citation

  • Benjamin Beckers & Samya Beidas-Strom, 2015. "Forecasting the Nominal Brent Oil Price with VARs—One Model Fits All?," IMF Working Papers 2015/251, International Monetary Fund.
  • Handle: RePEc:imf:imfwpa:2015/251
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=43423
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jacob A. Mincer & Victor Zarnowitz, 1969. "The Evaluation of Economic Forecasts," NBER Chapters, in: Economic Forecasts and Expectations: Analysis of Forecasting Behavior and Performance, pages 3-46, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Alquist, Ron & Kilian, Lutz & Vigfusson, Robert J., 2013. "Forecasting the Price of Oil," Handbook of Economic Forecasting, in: G. Elliott & C. Granger & A. Timmermann (ed.), Handbook of Economic Forecasting, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 427-507, Elsevier.
    3. Benes, Jaromir & Chauvet, Marcelle & Kamenik, Ondra & Kumhof, Michael & Laxton, Douglas & Mursula, Susanna & Selody, Jack, 2015. "The future of oil: Geology versus technology," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 31(1), pages 207-221.
    4. Diebold, Francis X & Mariano, Roberto S, 2002. "Comparing Predictive Accuracy," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 20(1), pages 134-144, January.
    5. Christiane Baumeister & Lutz Kilian, 2014. "What Central Bankers Need To Know About Forecasting Oil Prices," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 55(3), pages 869-889, August.
    6. Jacob A. Mincer, 1969. "Economic Forecasts and Expectations: Analysis of Forecasting Behavior and Performance," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number minc69-1.
    7. Samya Beidas-Strom & Mr. Andrea Pescatori, 2014. "Oil Price Volatility and the Role of Speculation," IMF Working Papers 2014/218, International Monetary Fund.
    8. Lutz Kilian, 2009. "Not All Oil Price Shocks Are Alike: Disentangling Demand and Supply Shocks in the Crude Oil Market," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(3), pages 1053-1069, June.
    9. Knut Are Aastveit & Hilde C. Bjørnland & Leif Anders Thorsrud, 2015. "What Drives Oil Prices? Emerging Versus Developed Economies," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(7), pages 1013-1028, November.
    10. Mr. David A Reichsfeld & Mr. Shaun K. Roache, 2011. "Do Commodity Futures Help Forecast Spot Prices?," IMF Working Papers 2011/254, International Monetary Fund.
    11. Lutz Kilian & Daniel P. Murphy, 2014. "The Role Of Inventories And Speculative Trading In The Global Market For Crude Oil," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 29(3), pages 454-478, April.
    12. Mark W. Watson & James H. Stock, 2004. "Combination forecasts of output growth in a seven-country data set," Journal of Forecasting, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 23(6), pages 405-430.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ramesh Bollapragada & Akash Mankude & V. Udayabhanu, 2021. "Forecasting the price of crude oil," DECISION: Official Journal of the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, Springer;Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, vol. 48(2), pages 207-231, June.
    2. de Albuquerquemello, Vinícius Phillipe & de Medeiros, Rennan Kertlly & da Nóbrega Besarria, Cássio & Maia, Sinézio Fernandes, 2018. "Forecasting crude oil price: Does exist an optimal econometric model?," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 155(C), pages 578-591.
    3. Considine, Jennifer & Hatipoglu, Emre & Aldayel, Abdullah, 2022. "The sensitivity of oil price shocks to preexisting market conditions: A GVAR analysis," Journal of Commodity Markets, Elsevier, vol. 27(C).
    4. Drachal, Krzysztof, 2021. "Forecasting crude oil real prices with averaging time-varying VAR models," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Wang, Yudong & Hao, Xianfeng, 2022. "Forecasting the real prices of crude oil: A robust weighted least squares approach," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 116(C).
    2. Christiane Baumeister & Lutz Kilian, 2015. "Forecasting the Real Price of Oil in a Changing World: A Forecast Combination Approach," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 33(3), pages 338-351, July.
    3. Conlon, Thomas & Cotter, John & Eyiah-Donkor, Emmanuel, 2024. "Forecasting the price of oil: A cautionary note," Journal of Commodity Markets, Elsevier, vol. 33(C).
    4. Liu, Li & Ma, Feng & Wang, Yudong, 2015. "Forecasting excess stock returns with crude oil market data," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 316-324.
    5. Simona Delle Chiaie & Laurent Ferrara & Domenico Giannone, 2022. "Common factors of commodity prices," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 37(3), pages 461-476, April.
    6. Baumeister, Christiane & Guérin, Pierre & Kilian, Lutz, 2015. "Do high-frequency financial data help forecast oil prices? The MIDAS touch at work," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 238-252.
    7. Christiane Baumeister & Lutz Kilian, 2014. "What Central Bankers Need To Know About Forecasting Oil Prices," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 55(3), pages 869-889, August.
    8. Lang, Korbinian & Auer, Benjamin R., 2020. "The economic and financial properties of crude oil: A review," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 52(C).
    9. Conlon, Thomas & Cotter, John & Eyiah-Donkor, Emmanuel, 2022. "The illusion of oil return predictability: The choice of data matters!," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 134(C).
    10. Bonnier, Jean-Baptiste, 2022. "Forecasting crude oil volatility with exogenous predictors: As good as it GETS?," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 111(C).
    11. Wang, Yudong & Hao, Xianfeng, 2023. "Forecasting the real prices of crude oil: What is the role of parameter instability?," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 117(C).
    12. Panopoulou, Ekaterini & Pantelidis, Theologos, 2015. "Speculative behaviour and oil price predictability," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 128-136.
    13. Nonejad, Nima, 2021. "The price of crude oil and (conditional) out-of-sample predictability of world industrial production," Journal of Commodity Markets, Elsevier, vol. 23(C).
    14. Drachal, Krzysztof, 2018. "Comparison between Bayesian and information-theoretic model averaging: Fossil fuels prices example," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 208-251.
    15. Miao, Hong & Ramchander, Sanjay & Wang, Tianyang & Yang, Dongxiao, 2017. "Influential factors in crude oil price forecasting," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 77-88.
    16. Caldara, Dario & Cavallo, Michele & Iacoviello, Matteo, 2019. "Oil price elasticities and oil price fluctuations," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 103(C), pages 1-20.
    17. Christiane Baumeister & Lutz Kilian & Thomas K. Lee, 2017. "Inside the Crystal Ball: New Approaches to Predicting the Gasoline Price at the Pump," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 32(2), pages 275-295, March.
    18. Lutz Kilian, 2017. "The Impact of the Fracking Boom on Arab Oil Producers," The Energy Journal, , vol. 38(6), pages 137-160, November.
    19. Degiannakis, Stavros & Filis, George, 2018. "Forecasting oil prices: High-frequency financial data are indeed useful," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 388-402.
    20. Drachal, Krzysztof, 2021. "Forecasting crude oil real prices with averaging time-varying VAR models," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:imf:imfwpa:2015/251. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Akshay Modi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/imfffus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.