Abstract for: Modeling the Impacts of Middle East and North Africa Unrest on the Global Oil Price

Social and political phenomena of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), as the main oil producer region, are of the crucial importance. In this paper, we will try to give a better model of the oil markets and the factors that are important in determining the oil price. The previous models take into account the interactions of the supply and demand forces of the market to determine the oil price. However, in our model, we will consider another important factor as well, namely the Naked Fear in the oil markets, which mainly reflects the several concerns in the supply and demand parts of the oil trade. After studying the various causal loops, by means of simulating the model, we will show that the predictions for the trends of oil price made by our model, concords with the real data that have been observed. Furthermore, the model provides a way for testing some policies and solutions proposed for reducing the fluctuations of the oil markets due to the social unrests in the region, in addition to their influences on the global economy.