Do changes in oil price have an influence on GDP growth?

The paper focuses on the oil price-macroeconomy relationship by means of analyzing the impact of oil price changes on economic growth in the United States of America from 1947: Q1 to 2001: Q4. First, we present the most important oil shocks that occurred in the second half of the last century. Then we describe three different proxies of oil price changes. Second, we provide large analyze of the impact of oil price increases and decreases on the GDP using the different types of measurements of oil shock. The results suggest that an oil price increase, which overcomes it's own maximum values from three previous years, has greater negative effect on production growth than if it simply corrects the previous decreases or exceeds a one year maximum only. The paper also presents a hypothesis that oil price decreases do not contribute to economic growth. All these results allow us to maintain the nonlinear interpretation of the analyzed relationship suggested by Hamilton.economic growth, gross domestic product, oil shock, nonlinear