Full Title: Recalling the Oil Shock of 40 Years Ago
Author(s): Joel Darmstadter
Publisher(s): Resources for the Future
Publication Date: December 1, 2013
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Description (excerpt):
One would have to be a committed contrarian to downplay the seriousness of the worldwide oil-price shock of 1973– 1974, currently being recalled in both popular media and specialized publications. For, without question, the virtually unprecedented and precipitous more-than-threefold increase in the real price of a barrel of oil (imposed in several stages within a few months) produced not only significant near-term economic damage in the United States and elsewhere but also intense policy concerns about the implications for future vulnerability of energy-dependent societies. (Throughout this paper, prices are expressed in constant 2012 dollars.) By 1980, those concerns came to be reinforced by market turmoil associated with the Iranian Revolution. But this Issue Brief focuses largely on the earlier events.