An empirical exploration of the world oil price under the target zone model

This paper investigates the behavior of the world oil price based on the first-generation target zone model. Using anecdotal data during the period of 1988-1999, we found that OPEC has tried to maintain a weak target zone regime for the oil price. Our econometric tests suggest that the movement of the oil price is not only manipulated by actual and substantial interventions by OPEC but also tempered by market participants' expectations of interventions. As a consequence, the non-linear model based on the target zone theory has very good forecasting ability when the oil price approaches the upper or lower limit of the band. (author)