New evidence on the relationship beetween crude oil and petroleum product prices

The present study aims at providing new evidence on the price re- lationships between crude oil and petroleum products. We employ single-equation error correction models (ECM) in which both changes in crude oil price and deviations from the long-run equilibrium are used to explain product price dynamics. A GARCH structure is applied to models' residuals to account for the time-varying volatility. Our key piece of innovation is the introduction of re¯ning margin e®ects to the analysis of the asymmetric products price movements. Results suggest that the overall balance in the re¯nery sector plays an important part in the adjustment to crude price shocks.Oil prices; Market integration; Cointegration; Error correction models;

Renormalization of an effective model Hamiltonian by a counter term

An ill-defined integral equation for modeling the mass-spectrum of mesons is regulated with an additional but unphysical parameter. This parameter dependance is removed by renormalization. Illustrative graphical examples are given.Comment: 3 pages, 3 figures, 1 reference. to be published in Nucl. Phys. B (Proc. Suppl.) Talk presented at the Workshop "Light-cone Physics: Particles and Strings" at ECT* in Trento, Sep 3-11, 200