The rapid escalations of energy prices, in late 1973 and early 1974 and again in mid- and late-1979, have had major adverse impactson the U.S. economy. The energy price shock of 1973-1974 played a dominant role, by most accounts, in bringing about the deep recession and high inflation of the...

Primary aluminum smelting is one of the giant energy users among the manufacturing industries. With current technology, the smelting is done by an electrolytic process requiring as much as 13 to 19 megawatt-hours (MWh) of direct-current electricity per metric ton of aluminum metal.

The correlations between oil-price movements and GDP fluctuations are investigated for the United States, Canada, Japan, Germany (West), France, the United Kingdom, and Norway. The responses to price increases and decreases are allowed to be asymmetric. Bivariate correlations as well as partial...

The last twenty years have seen a number of oil-price changes with macroeconomic effects. Oil price increases spur inflation and produce recessions. Oil price declines dampen inflation, but do not necessarily boost real activity. The correlations can be traced back to World War II. The paper...

Recent events in the oil market make it easy to forget the policy problems of dealing with supply interruptions. Realizing that history tends to repeat itself and that crises are not conducive to good decisions, it seems worthwhile, therefore, to examine the problem of efficient pricing in the...

Harry Saunders's paper on the above subject in this issue of the Journal raises a very interesting point. As is well known, oil-exporting countries now hold major assets in the Western economies. Furthermore, the sensitivity of these economies to abrupt changes in oil prices seems widely...