OPEC oil shocks
1970s episodes when oil exporters curtailed supply or raised prices sharply—propagating stagflation and recalibrating monetary policy worldwide.
Higher energy costs raised business costs and consumer prices while dragging real income—producing simultaneous inflation and unemployment spikes that strained Keynesian fine-tuning.
Geopolitics (Middle East conflict, embargoes) tied energy security to macro stability and later climate-transition debates.
Policy legacy
The shocks forced central banks to treat supply interruptions as distinct from excess demand, contributed to the Great Inflation’s politics, and set precedents for energy security as a macro issue—a thread picked up in energy-shocks-and-stagflation and inflation topics here.