Energy prices, multiple structural breaks, and efficient market hypothesis

This paper investigates the efficient market hypothesis using total energy price and four kinds of various disaggregated energy prices – coal, oil, gas, and electricity – for OECD countries over the period 1978–2006. We employ a highly flexible panel data stationarity test of Carrion-i-Silvestre et al. [Carrion-i-Silvestre JL, Del Barrio-Castro T, Lopez-Bazo E. Breaking the panels: an application to GDP per capita. J Econometrics 2005;8:159–75], which incorporates multiple shifts in level and slope, thereby controlling for cross-sectional dependence through bootstrap methods. Overwhelming evidence in favor of the broken stationarity hypothesis is found, implying that energy prices are not characterized by an efficient market. Thus, it shows the presence of profitable arbitrage opportunities among energy prices. The estimated breaks are meaningful and coincide with the most critical events which affected the energy prices.