Oil Shock Horror blog -- the story thus far

9 months after a tentative start last September, and with 45 posts clocked up here at Oil Shock Horror Probe, I thought it was time to re-cap. What are the trends and themes that have emerged so far?

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High oil prices cause "large" effect on inflation - NZ Report

A 2005 study by New Zealand Reserve Bank economist Felix Delbruck ("Oil prices and the New Zealand economy" - Reserve Bank of New Zealand: Bulletin, Vol. 68, No. 4) has found that the inflationary effects of higher oil prices were "quite large". Specifically that :-

• the direct impact of a $.10c a litre increase in petrol price lead to an immediate increase in the average household's living cost of about 0.3%
• the indirect effect (of higher bus, taxi, train and air travel, and firms passing on higher transport costs which raised the cost of food etc) added another 0.3% onto the direct effect -- a total 0.6% increase in the CPI for every $.10c a litre increase in fuel. 

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NZ Budget 2011 Ignores Oil Shock Impacts

The Times [article behind a paywall] has just broken a story that the UK government has been undertaking research on the likely adverse effects on their economy of an oil price spike.
The Times reports that

"A sudden huge increase in oil prices would cut more than £102 billion from the economy over the next five years, wrecking Britain's economic recovery, increasing unemployment and provoking industrial action, according to government research."

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