IMF economists, Rabah Arezki and Olivier Blanchard, have penned a useful primer on oil prices, which argues that the heavy slide in prices could help to boost global economic activity by up to 0.7% next year, but that the impact will be vastly different across economies. The key points of the report are as follows:
Overall, we see [plunging oil prices] as a shot in the arm for the global economy… we find a gain for world GDP between 0.3 and 0.7 percent in 2015, compared to a scenario without the drop in oil prices.