Factors Affecting the Crude Oil Prices Volatility: A Case Study of the USA, China, Japan, Germany and India

Abstract

This paper investigates the determinants of crude oil in the world’s top five economies, including the USA, China, Germany, Japan and India. To examine the impact of the exchange rate, oil imports, oil demand by the commercial sector, oil demand by the transport sector, oil demand by the power sector, industrial production and oil inventory on crude oil prices of the top five economies have been studied from 1990 to 2020. We applied the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model for the analysis of the research. Panel results showed a significant impact of the exchange rate in the long and short run on crude oil prices. On the other hand, in case of Germany’s Industrial production, exchange rate, oil imports, and demand for oil by the power sectors have a significant effect on the prices of crude oil. In the case of India, industrial production, exchange rate, oil consumption, investment in oil, import of oil and demand for oil by the transport sectors have a significant effect on the prices of crude oil. In the case of the USA, crude oil inventories have a significant impact on crude oil prices in the long run. In the case of Japan’s exchange rate, oil consumption has a substantial effect on crude oil prices in both the long run and short run. We found that the exchange rate is the most significant factor which influences crude oil prices in all five countries.