Hollis B. Chenery
Essay
Summer
1981
Since 1973, attempts to adjust the structure of the world economy to rapidly rising costs of energy have dominated all other economic issues. Successive efforts to accomplish this objective through international agreements between oil importing and exporting countries have met with very limited success, largely because of the attempt to link them to a range of other problems. On the other hand, adjustment in the narrower sense of maintaining essential supplies of higher cost oil within the existing framework of trade and capital flows has been quite effective for many countries. The annual growth of world oil consumption has been cut from over seven percent before 1973 to less than two percent since then, thereby eliminating the excessive drain on the petroleum resources of the nations in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).
Essay
Summer
1981
INTRODUCTION: Since 1973, attempts to adjust the structure of the world economy to rapidly rising costs of energy have dominated all other economic issues. Successive efforts to accomplish this objective through international agreements between oil importing and exporting countries have met with very limited success, largely because of the attempt to link them to a range of other problems. On the other hand, adjustment in the narrower sense of maintaining essential supplies of higher cost oil within the existing framework of trade and capital flows has been quite effective for many countries. The annual growth of world oil consumption has been cut from over seven percent before 1973 to less than two percent since then, thereby eliminating the excessive drain on the petroleum resources of the nations in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).
Essay
Jan
1975
The world economy is currently in a state of disequilibrium of a magnitude not seen since the aftermath of World War II. The symptoms of underlying stress have been manifested over the past two years in the form of raw-material shortages, a food and fertilizer crisis, a dramatic rise in petroleum prices, and finally, worldwide inflation and threats of impending financial disaster.
