Oil Price Uncertainty and Consumer Sentiment in Advanced Economies

Abstract

How does oil price uncertainty affect consumer sentiment in advanced economies? Is the response of consumer sentiment to exogenous positive and negative oil price shocks symmetric or asymmetric? Motivated to answer these questions, this paper provides a comprehensive examination of the effects of real oil price shocks on consumer sentiment in the G7 economies in the context of two classes of empirical models. With the application of a bivariate structural GARCH-in-Mean VAR model we find that (in general) oil price uncertainty has a negative and statistically significant effect on consumer sentiment in the G7 countries. Moreover, using a test of symmetry, we find that the relationship between oil prices and consumer sentiment is in general asymmetric.