Comments by Alan S. Blinder and Lutz Kilian

摘要

James Hamilton's fine paper poses a question that seems especially appropriate, having been presented at this conference just a few days before Passover: Why was this oil price shock different from all other oil price shocks (if indeed it was)?rnFor readers without a working knowledge of the Haggadah, the famous Four Questions posed at each seder are what we would now call (although the ancient rabbis did not) "bullet points" under one umbrella question: "Why is this night different from all other nights?" Analogously, I would phrase Hamilton's umbrella question as, "Why was the 2002-08 oil shock so different from OPEC I and OPEC II?" Notice that I make the start date 2002, not 2007 as Hamilton does, for that is when the long escalation of the oil price began.