Price Leadership on the World Crude Oil Market

ABSTRACT

The paper investigates the role of Saudi Arabia in the dynamic behavior of world crude oil prices over recent decades. The analysis tests the hypothesis that Saudi Arabian crude oil prices lead crude oil prices on the world market. If Saudi Arabian crude oil price has led the prices of other countries on the world crude oil market, there would be a long-run equilibrium relationship between each country’s crude oil price and Saudi Arabian price. Comparable geographic data were assembled for six OPEC (Iran, Indonesia, Libya, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela) and six non-OPEC (Canada, China, Mexico, Norway, United Kingdom and United States) countries, covering the period 1970 through 2007. Three widely used econometric techniques (dynamic correlation analysis, cointegration analysis and VAR analysis) are employed. The results support a long-run equilibrium relationship between Saudi Arabian crude oil price and prices in other OPEC and non-OPEC countries.