전체기사 최신뉴스 GAM
KYD 디데이
글로벌

속보

더보기

윌리엄 풀 총재, '에너지가격과 미국 경기주기" 연설(원문)

기사입력 :

최종수정 :

※ 본문 글자 크기 조정

  • 더 작게
  • 작게
  • 보통
  • 크게
  • 더 크게

※ 번역할 언어 선택

Energy Prices and the U.S. Business Cycle

William Poole*
President, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

Global Interdependence Center (GIC) Abroad in Chile Conference
American Chamber of Commerce in Chile Breakfast
Santiago, Chile
March 2, 2007

*I appreciate comments provided by my colleagues at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Edward Nelson, assistant vice president, provided special assistance. I take full responsibility for errors. The views expressed are mine and do not necessarily reflect official positions of the Federal Reserve System.

Energy Prices and the U.S. Business Cycle

A staple of the macroeconomics literature is that energy price shocks have been an important contributor to U.S. recessions. The situation is clearly more complicated than the common macro textbook exercise of using standard diagrams to work out the effects of an energy shock. Recent experience with a near tripling of oil prices from mid 2003 to mid 2006 without a recession suggests the need to review the conventional wisdom. One of my messages will be that the conventional wisdom fails to consider the fact that previous oil price shocks occurred when the U.S. economy was already suffering from substantial inflation pressures, whereas the recent run-up of oil prices has occurred in an economy with substantial overall price stability and entrenched, low inflation expectations.

Before I dig into the issue of the extent of causality between oil price shocks and recessions, I want to emphasize that the views I express here are mine and do not necessarily reflect official positions of the Federal Reserve System. I thank my colleagues at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis for their comments; Ed Nelson, asistant vice president, provided special assistance. However, I retain full responsibility for errors.
The Debate

The historical record since 1970 provides some perspective on the relationship between oil prices and the business cycle. The figure (at end of text) plots the U.S. benchmark oil price (the West Texas intermediate spot price), both in nominal terms (i.e., current U.S. dollars) and real terms (i.e., deflated by the CPI so as to be in constant 1982-84 dollars) since 1970. Shaded regions denote U.S. recessions, as designated by the National Bureau of Economic Research. These include the recession of 1973-75, associated with the oil price shock of 1973-74, the recessions of 1980 and 1981-82, preceded by the second oil shock in 1979, and the recession of 1990-91, also associated with a large, but more transitory, oil price increase of about 75 percent in 1990-91. There are also more drawn-out but steep oil increases in 1999-2000 and 2003-2006. The presence of the recession bars in the graph brings out what Hamilton and Herrera (2004, p. 265) observe is “a correlation between increases in oil prices and subsequent economic downturns.” In particular, recessions began in the United States within a year of the 1973, 1979 and 1990 oil price increases.

There has been much debate on how much of this link between recessions and prior oil price increases should be attributed to the powerful effect of oil shocks on the economy, and how much reflects a third factor—more restrictive monetary policy imposed at roughly the same time as the oil shocks. But I would draw attention to another aspect of the relationship between the business cycle and oil prices highlighted by the figure. The United States has never had an energy price spike occur in the middle of a recession, or immediately following a recession when unemployment is still relatively high. This fact suggests two properties of large oil price increases that are useful to keep in mind. First, very sharp increases in oil prices that we have observed historically, while undoubtedly reflecting exogenous supply disruptions to some degree, also reflect the strength of the economy at the time. Secondly, the casual association often made, based on the 1970s experience, between oil price increases and high inflation, is largely misguided because the large oil price increases of the 1970s occurred against the background of cyclical expansions that had gone too far.

The 1973 and 1979 episodes did not feature inflationary spirals triggered by the oil shocks. Instead, they are characterized by preexisting, general inflationary pressures that an alternative monetary policy could have avoided. The first oil shock in 1973 occurred against a background of clear economic overheating in the United States. U.S. monetary policy was very expansionary in 1971 and 1972, leading to excessive growth of aggregate demand that, even in the presence of price controls, spilled over into rising inflation in 1973. By October 1973—that is, the month of the first oil shock, but largely before its impact could be felt in the CPI—inflation had reached 8.1 percent on a 12-month basis, a sharp rise from the 3.2 percent rate over the 12 months ending in October 1972. Annual CPI inflation subsequently rose to 11.8 percent in October 1974 and peaked at 12.2 percent in November 1974.

Similarly, in the wake of several years of expanding demand, inflation rose throughout most of 1977 and 1978, well before the second oil shock, and the 12-month rate stood at 9.3 percent in January 1979, 2.5 percentage points above its value of January 1978. Inflation subsequently peaked at 14.6 percent in March 1980. Even the 1990 oil price spike occurred late in a long economic expansion, with annual inflation having stood above 4 percent since mid-1988. In July 1990, the 12-month CPI inflation rate was 4.8 percent, too high to correspond to price stability and not far below the July 1989 value of 5.1 percent. Following the oil shock that began in August 1990, inflation peaked at 6.4 percent in October 1990.

The strength of the economy at the time of the three oil shocks is also reflected in the unemployment rate. In October 1973, the seasonally adjusted U.S. unemployment rate stood at 4.6 percent, its lowest rate since early 1970; in January 1979 it was 5.9 percent, close to its trough for the late 1970s expansion; and in July 1990, unemployment was 5.5 percent, above its March 1989 low of 5.0 percent, but still lower than its value in any month in the years 1975-1987.

This emphasis on the link between the state of the business cycle and the strength of oil prices may seem surprising. Many of the well-known spikes in the oil price are associated with exogenous events on the supply side: for example, OPEC’s quadrupling of the oil price in late 1973 in the wake of the Middle East war; OPEC’s doubling of the oil price in 1979 following the revolution in Iran; and Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990. These events were certainly major supply-side disruptions. But even a cartel like OPEC that administers the price of its product cannot ignore market conditions. In particular, a reason why OPEC was able to sustain the very large 1973 oil price increase for so long was because world demand for oil was underpinned by rapid expansion of aggregate demand in key markets in Europe, Japan and the United States. Indeed, some analysts of the 1973 oil shock have cast doubt on whether the oil price increase of 1973 can be considered an exogenous event at all; Barsky and Kilian (2001) argue that it was a delayed response to long-term demand developments in the oil market, combined with a response to contemporaneous buoyant world demand conditions.(1) We do not have to go this far, however, to recognize that there was a significant endogenous component to the oil price increases in 1973 and 1979 due to demand factors, reflecting an overheating of the U.S. economy which coincided with boom conditions in other advanced economies.
Oil Prices and Inflation

Members of the FOMC, as well as monetary policy makers in Europe and the United Kingdom, have spoken about oil prices and inflation on many occasions in recent years. Despite differences in emphasis, a clear proposition runs through these discussions: Irrespective of the behavior of oil prices, we can be confident that monetary policy oriented to price stability will deliver control over inflation over the medium term. It is worth spelling out this proposition in some detail.

The reason why price stability is not contingent on oil price behavior is that inflation is a sustained rise in the general level of prices. The price of oil enters heavily into a particular category of consumer prices—gasoline prices—and indirectly into the prices of many other products. It is possible for the price of energy-intensive goods to change relative to a general index of prices; in fact, such relative-price movements are part of the everyday workings of a market economy. And, over periods of, say, a year or more it is possible for monetary policy to secure low inflation—which means low growth rates in indexes of overall prices—even when energy price inflation is high. Over time, the general level of prices responds to the supply-demand imbalance in the economy: that is, to longer-term movement in total spending in the economy relative to long-run supply potential. Monetary policy actions affect the total volume of spending, and so can influence the balance between aggregate demand and supply. By keeping aggregate demand in balance with aggregate supply, monetary policy can create conditions for general price stability, even if certain components in the price index are persistently increasing.

Two aspects of this picture are worth emphasizing. First, the overall price level is susceptible to influence by monetary policy even if the price of oil, or other commodities, is being driven by exogenous supply events. That is why Milton Friedman could advance his proposition that “inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon” even though he acknowledged that the 1973 OPEC shock had produced a “drastic alteration in the conditions of supply of crude oil.”(2) The general trend of prices is distinct from the behavior of a single price in the index or subset of the index. Inflation is always an endogenous variable in the medium term, whatever exogenous shocks are affecting its components in the short term.

Secondly, monetary policymakers often pay attention to “core” measures of prices that exclude energy and food prices. This focus does not, however, mean that policymakers’ concept of price stability refers only to a basket of goods that excludes energy-intensive items. The overall cost of living is what matters for welfare, so stability over time in indexes that include energy is desirable. But because the price of gasoline is volatile, it is often desirable to “see through” very short-term movements in consumer prices, and work out what is happening to the underlying trend of prices. Looking at core measures of inflation can be useful for this purpose. Indeed core and aggregate inflation clearly move together over longer periods. That said, during periods of sustained increases in relative energy prices, general price stability requires that price indexes that exclude energy will need to grow more slowly than the aggregate price index; over this period, achievement of inflation at a desirable level means that core inflation, on average, proceeds below the overall level of inflation.

Thirdly, an oil price increase may reduce aggregate supply and policymakers also need to take this fact into account in keeping demand and supply in balance. This issue is most prominent when the oil price change is permanent and when the economy’s technology is very energy-intensive on average. The 1973 oil shock, for example, was long-lasting and took place at a time when U.S. production was very energy-inefficient. Potential output thus fell substantially. The economy was already overheated by 1973; so, some reining in of spending by monetary policy was justified even before the oil shock; but once the oil shock took place, monetary policy needed to tighten, just to keep supply and demand from going further into imbalance. That is, it was necessary to let actual output fall with the decline in potential output. From this perspective, Hamilton and Herrera (2004) are not necessarily posing the right question when they ask how much of a monetary policy loosening would have been required to avoid a recession after the 1973 oil shock. The supply shock alone justified a monetary policy tightening on stabilization grounds.

In recent years, on the other hand, the circumstances of the 1973 oil shock have not been repeated. The economy has not been overheated; the economy is more energy-efficient so the impact on supply of oil shocks has been moderated; and the more severe spikes in the oil price such as in summer 2006 have been recognized as transitory in nature. In these circumstances, monetary policy is in a much better position to support aggregate demand in the face of oil shocks without endangering medium-term price stability. This state of affairs has been emphasized by the Federal Reserve Chairman in his discussion of the effect of oil shocks (Bernanke, 2006).

In summary, maintenance of low inflation over a period of several years or more is achievable whatever happens to oil prices. The same was true in the 1970s, and the fact that inflation was high on average reflected over-expansionary monetary policy, not the oil shocks.
Recent Oil Price Increases

The oil price increase in 2003-2006 is in line with the earlier pattern that surges in oil prices occur during economic expansions. Indeed, recent increases are more clearly a demand phenomenon than the previous increases. Energy prices in recent years have been driven by demand rather than supply. The source of this demand is unusual compared to the past, with a smaller contribution of U.S. demand and a much larger contribution of China. China’s net imports of oil were projected to be 2.3 percent of its GDP in 2006 compared to 0.9 percent in 2002 (IMF, 2006, p. 31). A longer-term perspective is given by the fact that China’s share of world demand for oil is estimated to have risen from 3.5 percent in 1990 to around 8.2 percent in 2006 (Weber, 2006). This increase reflects the rapid growth and industrialization of China in the past fifteen years, as well as the use of production technology that is, on average, energy-inefficient compared to the United States.
Conclusions

Without question, energy supply shocks are disruptive, but they need not create recessions. Indeed, there is a more general lesson from experience with oil price shocks. Monetary policy should not allow an economy to operate at the edge of a cliff. When balanced precariously at the edge of a cliff, even a minor disturbance, oil or otherwise, may be sufficient to push the economy over the edge. Although an outside shock may be the catalyst, or trigger, that creates undue inflation pressures, the fundamental problem is not the catalyst but the powerful and risky brew of an overheated economy. To use another analogy, if someone opens gas jets and fills a house with gas, do we blame the explosion on the person who lights the match or the person who opened the jets? I know where I want to place the blame.


Footnotes

1. See Hamilton (2003, pp. 388-89) for a rebuttal of Barsky and Kilian’s (2001) position that the 1973-74 oil price increase did not incorporate a major exogenous supply shift.

2. Friedman and Schwartz (1982, p. 414).


References

Barsky, Robert B., and Lutz Kilian (2001). “Do We Really Know That Oil Caused the Great Stagflation? A Monetary Alternative,” NBER Macroeconomics Annual, Vol. 16(1), 137-183.

Bernanke, Ben S. (2006). “Energy and the Economy.” Remarks before the Economic Club of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, June 15.

Friedman, Milton, and Anna J. Schwartz (1982). Monetary Trends in the United States and the United Kingdom. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Hamilton, James D. (2003). “What Is an Oil Shock?,” Journal of Econometrics, Vol. 113(2), 363-398.

Hamilton, James D., and Ana Maria Herrera (2004). “Oil Shocks and Aggregate Macroeconomic Behavior: The Role of Monetary Policy,” Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Vol. 36(2), 265-286.

International Monetary Fund (2006). People’s Republic of China—Article IV Consultation: Staff Report. Washington, D.C.

Weber, Axel A. (2006). “Oil Price Shocks and Monetary Policy in the Euro Area.” Whitaker Lecture by President of the Deutsche Bundesbank.


[관련키워드]

[뉴스핌 베스트 기사]

사진
발견 어려운 췌장암 AI로 조기 진단 [베이징=뉴스핌] 조용성 특파원 = 중국 알리바바가 개발한 AI 솔루션이 췌장암 조기 진단을 해내는 것으로 나타났다. 췌장암은 발견하기가 극히 어려운 암으로, 보통 말기에 발견된다. 때문에 췌장암은 진단 후 5년 생존율이 10%에 불과하다. 중국의 AI 솔루션이 중국의 한 병원에서 시범 적용되고 있으며, 이를 통해 췌장암 조기 발견 사례가 늘고 있다고 뉴욕타임스 중문판이 6일 전했다. 알리바바가 개발한 이 솔루션의 명칭은 'PANDA(인공지능 췌장암 검사 시스템)'이다. 촬영된 CT 영상을 AI가 판독해 췌장암 확진을 결정하는 소프트웨어다. PANDA는 중국 내 여러 병원에서 임상을 진행 중이다. 이 중 한 곳은 닝보(寧波)대학 인민병원이다. 닝보대학 인민병원은 2024년 11월 PANDA를 도입해 임상시험을 시작했다. 현재까지 PANDA는 18만 건 이상의 복부 혹은 흉부 CT를 분석했고, 이를 통해 20건 이상의 췌장암을 발견했다. 이 중 14건은 조기 진단이었다. 췌장암은 조기 진단될 경우 수술을 통한 제거가 가능하다. 한 환자의 경우 복부 팽만감과 메스꺼움의 증상으로 병원을 찾아 CT를 촬영했으며, 췌장 전문 검사를 받지 않았지만, 췌장암 판정을 받았다. 현지 의사는 "PANDA의 식별이 없었으면 결코 췌장암 판정을 못 하는 상황이었으며, PANDA로 인해 환자의 췌장암이 조기에 발견됐고 수술을 통해 완치될 수 있었다"며 "AI가 환자의 생명을 구했다고 볼 수 있다"고 소개했다. 아직은 오차율이 비교적 높은 상태다. PANDA는 그동안 1400건의 스캔 영상에 대해 췌장암 가능 경고를 했다. 전문의들은 이 중 300개에 대해서만 정밀 진단이 필요하다고 판단했다. 이후 300명의 환자는 재검사를 받았다. 이 중 20여 건이 췌장암으로 판정받았다. PANDA를 개발한 곳은 알리바바 산하 다모(達摩)연구소다. 연구소의 베테랑 알고리즘 전문가는 2000명 이상의 췌장암 환자의 CT 영상을 취득해 방사선 전문의들에게 병변 위치를 수작업으로 표시하도록 요청했다. 그리고 결과물을 AI 학습으로 훈련시켰으며, 이를 통해 PANDA는 선명도가 낮은 CT 이미지에서도 췌장암을 식별할 수 있게 됐다. 알리바바의 PANDA는 지난해 4월 미국 식품의약국(FDA)으로부터 패스트트랙 의료 기기로 선정됐다. 해당 제도는 성능이 뛰어난 의료 기기의 경우 임상 시험 기간을 단축시켜준다. 캘리포니아 대학의 한 교수는 "임상 경험이 풍부한 전문가보다 PANDA가 의사들에게 더 가치가 있을 것"이라며 "PANDA와 같은 솔루션은 지방 병원이나 진료소의 유용한 보조수단이 될 것"이라고 평가했다. 중국 병원 자료사진. [신화사=뉴스핌 특약] ys1744@newspim.com 2026-01-06 11:36
사진
9월 북극항로 첫 시범운항 [부산=뉴스핌] 최영수 선임기자 = 해양수산부가 올해 북극항로 개척에 본격 나선다. 오는 8월 말에서 9월 중 컨테이너선(3000TEU급)을 투입해 시범운항을 실시할 예정이다. 이를 위해 상반기 중 시범운항에 참여할 선사 및 화주를 모집해 선정할 방침이다. ◆ 북극항로 개척 원년…첫 시범운항 주목 김성범 해양수산부 장관직무대행(차관)은 지난 5일 부산청사 해양수산부에서 신년 기자간담회를 열고 이 같은 내용을 포함한 새해 정책방향을 제시했다. 그는 "오는 9월 전후에 시범운항을 할 수 있도록 준비하고 있다"면서 "3000TEU급 컨테이너선을 투입할 예정"이라고 밝혔다. 이어 "3000TEU급 컨테이너선이 대형에 비하면 작다고 할 수 있지만, 크기는 중요하지 않다"면서 "중국이 지난해 운항한 선박도 4000TEU급 수준"이라고 설명했다. 김성범 해양수산부 장관직무대행(차관)이 지난 5일 부산청사 해양수산부에서 신년 기자간담회를 열고 새해 정책방향을 설명하고 있다. [사진=해양수산부] 2026.01.06 dream@newspim.com 김 대행은 "시범운항을 위해 올해 상반기 중에는 선사와 화주를 선정할 예정"이라면서 "시범운항이라는 면에서 여러 가지 인센티브를 제공할 방침"이라고 밝혔다. 다만 "선사가 선정되면 선사가 희망하는 게 있기 때문에 이를 반영해서 잘 결정하겠다"고 덧붙였다. 부산신청사 건립과 관련해서는 "내년 예산에 (신청사)설계비를 반영할 예정"이라면서 "내년부터 구체적인 (청사 건립)절차를 시작할 계획"이라고 밝혔다. UN해양총회 개최지와 관련해서는 "개최도시 선정은 UN과도 협의해야 할 사항"이라면서 "(유치에)관심 있는 도시들과 협의해서 결정하겠다"고 설명했다. ◆ 부산해양수도 조성 첫발…유관기관 모으기 가속 김 대행은 지난 5일 부산청사에서 열린 해수부 시무식에서 신년사를 통해 "북극항로 시대에 대비한 동남권 대도약을 실현하겠다"고 제시했다. 이를 위해 해양수산분야 유관기관을 부산으로 모으는 작업이 본격화될 전망이다. 해수부 산하기관들도 올해 부산 이전이 본격화될 것으로 보인다.  김 대행은 "기업, 공공기관, 해사법원, 동남권투자공사 등이 집적화된 해양클러스터 조성을 추진해 나가겠다"면서 "부산항을 세계 최대 규모의 항만으로 개발하고, 터미널 운영 효율화와 종합 항만서비스 제공을 통해 글로벌 물류 요충지로 성장시키겠다"고 다짐했다. 이어 "북극항로 시대에 대비한 동남권 대도약을 실현하겠다"면서 "부산에서 로테르담까지 북극항로 시범운항을 추진하고 해양수도권 육성전략을 조속히 수립하겠다"고 강조했다. 2026년 해양수산부 업무계획 [자료=해양수산부] 2025.12.23 dream@newspim.com dream@newspim.com 2026-01-06 11:00
기사 번역
결과물 출력을 준비하고 있어요.
종목 추적기

S&P 500 기업 중 기사 내용이 영향을 줄 종목 추적

결과물 출력을 준비하고 있어요.

긍정 영향 종목

  • Lockheed Martin Corp. Industrials
    우크라이나 안보 지원 강화 기대감으로 방산 수요 증가 직접적. 미·러 긴장 완화 불확실성 속에서도 방위산업 매출 안정성 강화 예상됨.

부정 영향 종목

  • Caterpillar Inc. Industrials
    우크라이나 전쟁 장기화 시 건설 및 중장비 수요 불확실성 직접적. 글로벌 인프라 투자 지연으로 매출 성장 둔화 가능성 있음.
이 내용에 포함된 데이터와 의견은 뉴스핌 AI가 분석한 결과입니다. 정보 제공 목적으로만 작성되었으며, 특정 종목 매매를 권유하지 않습니다. 투자 판단 및 결과에 대한 책임은 투자자 본인에게 있습니다. 주식 투자는 원금 손실 가능성이 있으므로, 투자 전 충분한 조사와 전문가 상담을 권장합니다.
안다쇼핑
Top으로 이동