What will be the impact of lower oil prices on global growth?

Pick up almost any business publication or newspaper and you will read someone's deep thoughts about the oil price, plus a multitude of predictions about where it will go next.

That the collapse in the oil price has been one of the more dramatic moves in markets during 2014 hardly needs saying. I have no doubt there are a few people who will claim that they saw it coming, but in reality such sudden moves in asset prices are unpredictable. Some economists may have got the direction right, but few will have dared predict the extent of the move. The problem when trying to assess trends in commodity prices is the market is inherently unstable. This is due to relatively unusual supply and demand conditions. On one side, near-term demand for oil is relatively p...