Energy economics: new series!
When the lockdowns from Covid faded away and the CDC ended mask mandates, we entered a new era. We entered a post-Covid world. The economy, too, began to look like something new and unfamiliar. The primary feature so far appears to be very high inflation. The inflation rate in the US hit over 8% by the beginning of 2022. This was the highest it had been since inflation skyrocketed in the early 1980s. A bit of history... As an economist interested in finance, energy, and history, this set off alarm bells. Those last two major spikes in the table above were associated with periods of high oil prices. This period is otherwise known as the 1970s energy crisis. And for good reason. In 1973, the countries supplying oil banded together to create OPEC and started an oil embargo in response to the Yom Kippur War. Later, in 1979, the Iranian revolution did the same, reducing the supply of oil and dramatically raising prices worldwide....