The shale oil boom and the US economy: Spillovers and time-varying effects

Abstract

We provide new evidence that the transmission of oil price shocks to the US economy has changed with the shale oil boom. To show this, we develop a time-varying parameter factor-augmented vector autoregressive (FAVAR) model with a large data environment of state-level, industry, and aggregate US data. The model effectively captures potential spillovers between oil and non-oil industries, as well as variation over time. Specified in this way, we find that investment, income, industrial production, and (non-oil) employment in most oil-producing and some manufacturing-intensive US states increase following an oil-specific shock—effects that were not present before the shale oil boom.