IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/15538.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Electric Cars and Oil Prices

Author

Listed:
  • Azar, Jose

Abstract

This paper studies the joint dynamics of oil prices and interest in electric cars, measured as the volume of Google searches for related phrases. Not surprisingly, I find that oil price shocks predict increases in Google searches for electric cars. Much more surprisingly, I also find that an increase in Google searches predicts declines in oil prices. The high level of public interest in electric cars between April and August of 2008 can explain approximately half of the decline in oil prices during the second half of 2008. These findings are significant because they show that oil markets respond to developments related to alternative technologies. I investigate several hypotheses explaining these results.

Suggested Citation

  • Azar, Jose, 2009. "Electric Cars and Oil Prices," MPRA Paper 15538, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:15538
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/15538/1/MPRA_paper_15538.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Harrison Hong & Terence Lim & Jeremy C. Stein, 2000. "Bad News Travels Slowly: Size, Analyst Coverage, and the Profitability of Momentum Strategies," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(1), pages 265-295, February.
    2. Eyal Dvir & Ken Rogoff, 2009. "The Three Epochs of Oil," Boston College Working Papers in Economics 706, Boston College Department of Economics.
    3. Christopher A. Sims & Tao Zha, 1999. "Error Bands for Impulse Responses," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 67(5), pages 1113-1156, September.
    4. Cutler, David M & Poterba, James M & Summers, Lawrence H, 1990. "Speculative Dynamics and the Role of Feedback Traders," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(2), pages 63-68, May.
    5. Christopher A. Sims & Tao Zha, 2006. "Were There Regime Switches in U.S. Monetary Policy?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(1), pages 54-81, March.
    6. Lutz Kilian, 2008. "The Economic Effects of Energy Price Shocks," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 46(4), pages 871-909, December.
    7. repec:bla:jfinan:v:53:y:1998:i:6:p:1839-1885 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. James D. Hamilton, 2009. "Understanding Crude Oil Prices," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 2), pages 179-206.
    9. Aruoba, S. BoraÄŸan & Diebold, Francis X. & Scotti, Chiara, 2009. "Real-Time Measurement of Business Conditions," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 27(4), pages 417-427.
    10. James D. Hamilton, 2009. "Understanding Crude Oil Prices," The Energy Journal, , vol. 30(2), pages 179-206, April.
    11. Hamilton, James D, 1989. "A New Approach to the Economic Analysis of Nonstationary Time Series and the Business Cycle," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 57(2), pages 357-384, March.
    12. Barberis, Nicholas & Shleifer, Andrei & Vishny, Robert, 1998. "A model of investor sentiment," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(3), pages 307-343, September.
    13. Sims, Christopher A & Zha, Tao, 1998. "Bayesian Methods for Dynamic Multivariate Models," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 39(4), pages 949-968, November.
    14. Harrison Hong & Jeremy C. Stein, 1999. "A Unified Theory of Underreaction, Momentum Trading, and Overreaction in Asset Markets," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 54(6), pages 2143-2184, December.
    15. Chib, Siddhartha, 1996. "Calculating posterior distributions and modal estimates in Markov mixture models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 75(1), pages 79-97, November.
    16. Jegadeesh, Narasimhan & Titman, Sheridan, 1993. "Returns to Buying Winners and Selling Losers: Implications for Stock Market Efficiency," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 48(1), pages 65-91, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Blog mentions

    As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
    1. Predicting oil prices from interest in electric cars
      by Economic Logician in Economic Logic on 2009-09-18 19:36:00

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Heather R. Tierney & Bing Pan, 2012. "A poisson regression examination of the relationship between website traffic and search engine queries," Netnomics, Springer, vol. 13(3), pages 155-189, October.
    2. Jun, Seung-Pyo & Park, Do-Hyung & Yeom, Jaeho, 2014. "The possibility of using search traffic information to explore consumer product attitudes and forecast consumer preference," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 237-253.

    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. Adam Zaremba & Jacob Koby Shemer, 2018. "Price-Based Investment Strategies," Springer Books, Springer, number 978-3-319-91530-2, June.
    2. David Hirshleifer, 2001. "Investor Psychology and Asset Pricing," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(4), pages 1533-1597, August.
    3. Waggoner, Daniel F. & Zha, Tao, 2012. "Confronting model misspecification in macroeconomics," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 171(2), pages 167-184.
    4. Tobias J. Moskowitz & Mark Grinblatt, 2002. "What Do We Really Know About the Cross-Sectional Relation Between Past and Expected Returns?," Yale School of Management Working Papers ysm259, Yale School of Management.
    5. Kang, Joseph & Liu, Ming-Hua & Ni, Sophie Xiaoyan, 2002. "Contrarian and momentum strategies in the China stock market: 1993-2000," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 10(3), pages 243-265, June.
    6. Cakici, Nusret & Tang, Yi & Yan, An, 2016. "Do the size, value, and momentum factors drive stock returns in emerging markets?," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 179-204.
    7. Chen, Chun-nan, 2013. "The predictability of opening returns for the returns of the trading day: Evidence from Taiwan futures market," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 25(C), pages 272-281.
    8. Yang, Haijun & Ge, Hengshun & Gao, Xinpeng, 2022. "An information diffusion model for momentum effect based on investor wealth," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 59(C).
    9. Ming-Shiun Pan, 2010. "Autocorrelation, return horizons, and momentum in stock returns," Journal of Economics and Finance, Springer;Academy of Economics and Finance, vol. 34(3), pages 284-300, July.
    10. Choi, Jaehyung, 2012. "Spontaneous symmetry breaking of arbitrage," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 391(11), pages 3206-3218.
    11. Tobias Wiest, 2023. "Momentum: what do we know 30 years after Jegadeesh and Titman’s seminal paper?," Financial Markets and Portfolio Management, Springer;Swiss Society for Financial Market Research, vol. 37(1), pages 95-114, March.
    12. Leland E. Farmer & Lawrence Schmidt & Allan Timmermann, 2023. "Pockets of Predictability," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 78(3), pages 1279-1341, June.
    13. Ben R. Marshall & Nhut H. Nguyen & Nuttawat Visaltanachoti, 2017. "Time series momentum and moving average trading rules," Quantitative Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 17(3), pages 405-421, March.
    14. Ahmad, Khurshid & Han, JingGuang & Hutson, Elaine & Kearney, Colm & Liu, Sha, 2016. "Media-expressed negative tone and firm-level stock returns," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 152-172.
    15. Sapienza, Paola & Polk, Christopher, 2003. "The Real Effects of Investor Sentiment," CEPR Discussion Papers 3826, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    16. Blitz, David & Huij, Joop & Martens, Martin, 2011. "Residual momentum," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 18(3), pages 506-521, June.
    17. Lim, Kian-Ping & Kim, Jae H., 2011. "Trade openness and the informational efficiency of emerging stock markets," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 28(5), pages 2228-2238, September.
    18. Cao, Jie & Han, Bing & Wang, Qinghai, 2017. "Institutional Investment Constraints and Stock Prices," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 52(2), pages 465-489, April.
    19. Yuan Wu & Taufiq Choudhry, 2018. "Information Uncertainty and Momentum Phenomenon Amidst Market Swings: Evidence From the Chinese Class A Share Market," Asia-Pacific Financial Markets, Springer;Japanese Association of Financial Economics and Engineering, vol. 25(2), pages 111-136, June.
    20. Zhu, Zhaobo & Duan, Xinrui & Sun, Licheng & Tu, Jun, 2019. "Momentum and reversal: The role of short selling," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 95-110.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Oil prices; crude oil; electric cars; electric vehicles; Google Trends; Google Insights;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G1 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets
    • Q5 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics
    • Q4 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Lists

    This item is featured on the following reading lists, Wikipedia, or ReplicationWiki pages:
    1. Economic Logic blog

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:pra:mprapa:15538. 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: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.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.