Future World Oil Prices and Production Levels: An Economic Analysis

This paper is motivated by our beliefs that (1) economics does matter in world oil markets and (2) today's applied models either entirely neglect or (at best) only partially incorporate well-known economic fundamentals. We know of no applied model preceding ours that fully embodies the fundamental microeconomics of both depletable resources and industrial market structure (specifically dominant firm cartel theory) that characterize the world oil market.