Energy Economics 31 (2009) 882–887

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Energy Economics j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w. e l s ev i e r. c o m / l o c a t e / e n e c o

Economic impacts of higher oil and gas prices The role of international trade for Germany
Christian Lutz a,⁎, Bernd Meyer a,b a b

Institute for Economic Structures Research (GWS), Osnabrueck, Germany University of Osnabrueck, Germany

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The analysis concentrates on direct and indirect price increases, induced shifts in international trade and structural changes in the oil importing economies. The paper at hand asks, whether a stabilizing effect via international trade and domestic structural change on the GDP of oil importing countries can be observed, if a permanent oil price increase occurs. At least for Germany, structural change from consumer goods to investment goods industry and an improvement of international competitiveness limit negative impacts of increased energy prices. Analysis is based on the extensive and disaggregated global GINFORS model and the detailed INFORGE model for the German economy. © 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Article history: Received 15 July 2008 Received in revised form 13 January 2009 Accepted 27 May 2009 Available online 6 June 2009 JEL classification: Q43 C53 C67 F17 Keywords: Global modelling Energy prices and the macro economy International trade

1. Introduction Oil price shocks have negative impacts on oil importing countries. There seems to be evidence for this plausible result from the literature of econometric studies with vector autoregressive models conducted by Darby (1982), Hamilton (1983) and others. The impact has weakened over the last decades with lower energy intensity of the major economies. The Energy Information Administration (2006) also points out that learning