Gasoline Price Graph
Posted in Econ, Environment by George
Edit! I forgot to account for CPI changes over time to adjust for inflation. The new graphs now reflect that, making my results slightly less impressive but still the same effect. CPI data obtained from BLS. Thank you, user comments on Reddit.
Many people are claiming they are “confused” or “shocked” due to an increase in gasoline prices. Gas prices increases happen every year, and the unquestionable trend of gas prices is up. Very up. This shouldn’t be a shock.
I read a post today on the Environmental Economics Blog that included a graph of gasoline prices from 2004 to 2007. It was informative, and showed the usual summer spike in prices that we’ve seen for the past three years. But how about looking at the 17 year trend (from 1990) and checking for summer spikes and a long-run upward trend? I went ahead and did that (click the image to see full-sized):
I also created a graph with a trendline (quadratic), for extra emphasis:
It’s not hard to see the direction gas prices are moving, and the fact that they rise almost every year at the same time (just before and during the summer driving months. The reason for the short term spikes is most likely increased demand, and the reason for the long term trend is most likely long-run decreasing supply (running out of oil) and long-run increasing demand (world standard of living is increasing and more people want cars and drive more).
April 4th, 2007 at 4:33 pm
The volatility in the Middle East (which got cranked up again around 2001) has probably not helped matters either.
April 4th, 2007 at 6:40 pm
Definitely agree with you, JJ. That emphasizes some of these spikes.
April 5th, 2007 at 5:44 pm
Perhaps you should do the graph back to 1970? Fuel is still cheap.
April 5th, 2007 at 8:58 pm
I’d like to see data showing the price of gas vs the price per barrel of oil. I suspect that the difference is also growing, somewhat irregularly. It always seems like they blame the “barrel price” for rises at the pump, but I don’t see the retail drop when the barrel price goes down.
April 6th, 2007 at 9:08 am
The months are all over the board within each year. Could you use the same three months of each year? Perhaps the first or last months of each quarter? That was we are comparing january 05 to January 06 and you are also comparing the delta or months in one year to the delta of the same months in the other years. This would pos. allow for a statistical prediction of prices to come based on past data.
April 6th, 2007 at 5:02 pm
That’s just scaling on the map. The data is available at http://www.gimme-five.com/gasprices.xls
November 16th, 2008 at 9:40 pm
Thank you for the good information…this will help my research.