Nonlinear Analysis and Dynamic Structure in the Energy Market

Abstract

This research assesses the dynamic structure of the energy sector of the aggregate economy in the context of nonlinear mechanisms. Earlier studies have focused mainly on the price of the energy products when detecting nonlinearities in time series data of the energy market, and there is little mention of the production side of the market. Moreover, there is a lack of exploration about the implication of high dimensionality and time aggregation when analyzing the market's fundamentals. This research will address these gaps by including the quantity side of the market in addition to the price and by systematically incorporating various frequencies for sample sizes in three essays. The goal of this research is to provide an inclusive and exhaustive examination of the dynamics in the energy markets. The first essay begins with the application of statistical techniques, and it incorporates the most well-known univariate tests for nonlinearity with distinct power functions over alternatives and tests different null hypotheses. It utilizes the daily spot price observations on five major products in the energy market. The results suggest that the time series daily spot prices of the energy products are highly nonlinear in their nature. They demonstrate apparent evidence of general nonlinear serial dependence in each individual series, as well as nonlinearity in the first, second, and third moments of the series. The second essay examines the underlying mechanism of crude oil production and identifies the nonlinear structure of the production market by utilizing various monthly time series observations of crude oil production: the U.S. field, Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), non-OPEC, and the world production of crude oil. The finding implies that the time series data of the U.S. field, OPEC, and the world production of crude oil exhibit deep nonlinearity in their structure and are generated by nonlinear mechanisms. However, the dynamics of the non-OPEC production time series data does not reveal signs of nonlinearity. The third essay explores nonlinear structure in the case of high dimensionality of the observations, different frequencies of sample sizes, and division of the samples into sub-samples. It systematically examines the robustness of the inference methods at various levels of time aggregation by employing daily spot prices on crude oil for 26 years as well as monthly spot price index on crude oil for 41 years. The daily and monthly samples are divided into sub-samples as well. All the tests detect strong evidence of nonlinear structure in the daily spot price of crude oil; whereas in monthly observations the evidence of nonlinear dependence is less dramatic, indicating that the nonlinear serial dependence will not be as intense when the time aggregation increase in time series observations.