James is the Editor of Econbrowser – a popular economics blog that Analyses current economic conditions and policy.
Here's one of the wilder suggestions floating around for what the President could do if Congress fails to raise the debt ceiling.To explain the idea,…
A lot of attention has been given to the optimistic assessments of future U.S. and Iraqi oil production in the IEA's World Energy Outlook 2012.…
Oil is fundamentally a depletable resource – once a barrel is extracted from the ground and burned, it is gone. Nevertheless, world oil production has…
On Monday the IEA released its World Energy Outlook 2012. This includes an optimistic assessment of the situation in the United States:The United States is…
On Wednesday I noted that encouraging more U.S. oil production was unlikely to result in a significant drop in U.S. retail gasoline prices. Nevertheless, I…
The boycott of Iran has been more successful than I had anticipated, with Iranian oil production and exports down significantly from a year ago.And even…
Gasoline prices in California are usually 30-40 cents a gallon higher than the rest of the country. About 20 cents of that is due to…
Can the wild swings in the price of oil over the last few weeks have anything to do with supply and demand?NYMEX November crude oil.…
As U.S. retail gasoline prices once again near $4.00 a gallon, does this pose a threat to the economy and President Obama's prospects for re-election?…
The price of Brent crude oil fell $35/barrel between April and June. But increases this summer have taken about $25 of that back.Price of Brent…
A recent study by Luciana Juvenal and Ivan Petrella suggests that the financialization of oil futures markets contributed significantly to the surge in oil prices…
Carpe Diem, Reuters, FTalphaville, and WhaleOil are among those calling attention to a new paper by Leonardo Maugeri, senior manager for the Italian oil company…
Since 2005, the "total oil supply" for the United States as reported by the Energy Information Administration increased by 2.2 million barrels per day. Of…
According to the Energy Information Administration, in March the United States produced a "total oil supply" of 10.8 million barrels per day, which was 2.1…
West Texas Intermediate crude oil, which had been selling for $105 a barrel at the end of March, fell to $80 a barrel last week,…
Here's a promising story for the U.S. economy.The figure below plots the price of crude oil in dollars per barrel and the price of natural…
It seems that no matter what financial series you look at, there's a similar pattern of ups and downs over the last few years. I…
In my previous post I described a new research paper with University of Chicago Professor Cynthia Wu on the Effects of Index-Fund Investing on Commodity…
Here I comment on some recent developments affecting oil and gasoline prices.There is no oil shortage in the central United States, and has not been…
Joseph P. Kennedy II, former Congressional Representative from Massachusetts, and founder, chairman, and president of Citizens Energy Corporation, has a proposal to make energy affordable…