Oil jump tail risk as a driver of inflation dynamics

Abstract

In this paper, we look at the role of various oil jump tail risk measures as drivers of both U.S. headline and core inflation. Those measures are first computed from high-frequency oil future prices and are then introduced into standard regression models in order to (i) assess in-sample determinants of inflation, (ii) assess overtime the evolution of inflation drivers, (iii) estimate impulse response functions and (iv) forecast inflation out-of-sample for various horizons. Empirical results suggest that oil jump tail risk measures contain useful information to describe inflation dynamics, generally leading to upward inflationary pressures. Even after controlling from standard variables involved in a Phillips curve, goodness-of-fit measures show evidence of a gain, in particular for headline inflation. Overall, we observe that oil jump tail risk measures are contributing more to inflation dynamics since the Covid-19 crisis.