Norway is a small country with an oversized oil sector. So how do fluctuations in crude oil prices affect its economy? It is too early to look at Norway’s GDP for any effects from the recent drop in oil prices. But we can look at its stock market. The graph above shows the price of North Sea oil (deflated to remove the general increase in prices) and the index of the Oslo Stock Exchange (converted to U.S. dollars and deflated as well). It is pretty obvious that there’s a strong relationship between the two. The relationship is even more obvious when you look at the scatter plot below, where each point corresponds to a date and each axis corresponds to one of the time series.

How these graphs were created: Search for “Share price Norway” and add the monthly index series to the graph. Note: We’ll use only monthly series here. Then add the series “Norway exchange rate” and “CPI United States” to series 1. Apply transformation a/b/c. Now select “Brent oil price” as series 2 and add “CPI United States” to it. Apply transformation a/b. Use the right y-axis for this series. (You may remove the axis labels, under the graph settings tab, if you think things have become too crowded with all these transformations.) Repeat these steps to create the second graph, but switch graph type to “Scatter” under the graph settings tab.

Suggested by Christian Zimmermann