The nagging influence of energy prices

It's been a while since I have posted.  I have a few other things going on, mainly working on finishing my dissertation. I did successfully defend my topic on May 1 (!), and have an awesome committee that understands how to constrain the output in the right way. So, mea culpa, and here is the first in at least a couple of energy-related posts.

For the US economy, it is fairly widely recognized that each recession is preceded by a run up in energy prices. For the US consumer, the most relevant energy price is gasoline. The mechanism by which this price initiates the recession is the negative correlation with spending on consumer durables. Here is what has been happening in the last two years:

As gasoline prices spike, consumer durable spending decreases. And vice versa. The widely recognized soft spot in 2011Q1 is seen here as a run up in gas prices and a decrease in consumer durable spending. We seem to be seeing a similar pattern this year, though consumer durable spending appears already to be recovering. If I have any short term hope for this economy, this graph is its parents. If gasoline prices continue decreasing, PCEDG will increase and help the economy grow. And vice versa.

The mechanism operates because gasoline expenditures are very price inelastic in the short run, and consumers are budget constrained. More spending on gasoline, less on durables, and most of those are manufactured in the US, so it depresses economic performance. This is a very demand-oriented story.

And, this is probably the most fundamental short term dynamic for US growth and the November election. And it is largely out of the control of the politicians.

I will shortly update a post I did a while ago on radical energy solutions that are in the pipeline and promise to break this link between energy/gasoline prices and US economic performance. This post hints at why that break will be so important.