Ahundjanov Behzod B, Akhundjanov Sherzod B, Okhunjanov Botir B
Department of Economics, Bucknell University, United States.
Department of Applied Economics, Utah State University, 4835 Old Main Hill, Logan, UT 84322-4835, United States.
J Econ Bus. 2021 May-Jun;115:105979. doi: 10.1016/j.jeconbus.2020.105979. Epub 2021 Jan 4.
The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) exposed individuals to a great uncertainty about its health and economic ramifications, especially in the early days and weeks of the outbreak. This study documents oil and gasoline market implications of individuals' behavior upon such uncertainty by analyzing the relationship between Google search queries related to COVID-19-information search that reflects one's level of concern about the subject (risk perception)-and the performance of oil and gasoline markets during the pandemic. The empirical analysis based on daily data and a structural vector autoregressive model reveals that a unit increase in the popularity of COVID-19 related global search queries, after controlling for COVID-19 cases, results in 0.083% and 0.104% of a cumulative decline in Dow Jones US Oil & Gas Total index and New York Harbor Conventional Gasoline Regular spot price, respectively, after one day, 0.189% and 0.234% of a cumulative decline after one week, and 0.191% and 0.237% of a cumulative decline after two weeks. The reaction of Brent and West Texas Intermediate crude oil prices to the spike in COVID-19 related online searches is found to be statistically insignificant, which can be explained by oil price pass-through into gasoline spot price.
新型冠状病毒（COVID-19）使人们对其健康和经济影响面临巨大的不确定性，尤其是在疫情爆发的最初几天和几周。本研究通过分析与COVID-19信息搜索相关的谷歌搜索查询（反映人们对该主题的关注程度，即风险认知）与疫情期间石油和汽油市场表现之间的关系，记录了个人行为对这种不确定性下石油和汽油市场的影响。基于每日数据和结构向量自回归模型的实证分析表明，在控制COVID-19病例后，与COVID-19相关的全球搜索查询热度每增加一个单位，一天后道琼斯美国石油和天然气总指数以及纽约港常规汽油现货价格分别累计下跌0.083%和0.104%，一周后累计下跌0.189%和0.234%，两周后累计下跌0.191%和0.237%。研究发现，布伦特原油和西德克萨斯中质原油价格对与COVID-19相关的在线搜索量激增的反应在统计上不显著，这可以通过油价传导至汽油现货价格来解释。
