Research Trend and Prospect of International Crude Oil Price Forecast

Purpose/Significance As a kind of important industrial raw material, commodity and strategic reserve, crude oil price fluctuations have significant impact on the global economy. Forecasting crude oil price is a hot research topic in the field of energy economy. To promote the in-depth development of the crude oil price prediction, this study systematically reviews the crude oil price prediction methods and provides future research direction. Design/Methodology Firstly, based on 295 papers from international journals, this paper analyzes the development stages, published journals and research institutions, etc, of international crude oil price forecasting research. Then, it systematically combs and analyzes the main forecasting methods for crude oil price in the past two decades. Finally, this paper gives a few comments and points out trend on crude oil price forecasting. Conclusions/Findings Since the financial crisis in 2008, oil price forecasting research has experienced rapid development, and related papers are mainly published in the authoritative journal Energy Economics in the energy economy field. The existing oil price forecasting methods mainly include econometric approaches, machine learning and hybrid prediction models. In future, it is worth making interval or probability density forecast of the crude oil price by using high-frequency intraday data and combining it with advanced methods of econometric models and machine learning. In addition, the practical application value of oil price forecasting results should also be deepened.