Car ownership modeling and forecasts for China

A great increase of private car ownership took place in China from 1980 to 2009 with the development of the economy. To explain the relationship between car ownership and economic and social changes, an ordinary least squares linear regression model is developed using car ownership per capita as the dependent variable with GDP, savings deposits and highway mileages per capita as the independent variables. The model is tested and corrected for econometric problems such as spurious correlation and cointegration. Finally, the regression model is used to project oil consumption by the Chinese transportation sector through 2015. The result shows that about 2.0 million barrels of oil will be consumed by private cars in conservative scenario, and about 2.6 million barrels of oil per day in high case scenario in 2015. Both of them are much higher than the consumption level of 2009, which is 1.9 million barrels per day. It also shows that the annual growth rate of oil demand by transportation is 2.7% - 3.1% per year in the conservative scenario, and 6.9% - 7.3% per year in the high case forecast scenario from 2010 to 2015. As a result, actions like increasing oil efficiency need to be taken to deal with challenges of the increasing demand for oil.

IS THE U.S. SHALE GAS BOOM HAVING AN EFFECT ON THE EUROPEAN GAS MARKET?

This thesis focuses on the impact of the American shale gas boom on the European natural gas market. The study presents different tests in order to analyze the dynamics of natural gas prices in the U.S., U.K. and German natural gas market. The question of cointegration between these different markets are analyzed using several tests. More specifically, the ADF tests for the presence of a unit root. The error correction model test and the Johansen cointegration procedure are applied in order to accept or reject the hypothesis of an integrated market. The results suggest no evidence of cointegration between these markets. There currently is no evidence of an impact of the U.S. shale gas boom on the European market.