"Oil stands alone among primary commodities in its potential for sending economic shock waves across the world. The value of oil production is one and a half times the world's total production of food grains; demand is unresponsive to price in the short run; and the world's oil resources are heavily concentrated in the Middle East, where political disturbances have been chronic and oil supply is subject to sudden interruption. Together, these factors have made oil a virtual rogue elephant in the world economy since 1973. This book discusses the oil shocks of 1973-74, 1979-80, and the ""minishock"" of 1990-91, and examines the possibility of oil shocks over the next twenty years. The authors assess the world market outlook on the basis of underlying trends on world oil supply and demand. They take into account prospects for investment in oil production in the Persian Gulf states, the former Soviet republics, and Latin America; environmental factors and policies; and political uncertainties in the Middle East. "

This volume is the record of a conference held in March 1989 that centered on a departure from the basic U.S. policy toward the long-standing problem of third world debt.Secretary of the Treasury Nicholas Brady took the occasion of the conference to announce that officially sponsored reduction of debt principal and debt interest should henceforth be an integral part of debt strategy. Promptly labeled the Brady Plan, the secretary's statement has since been the subject of extensive debate at home and abroad. Now that it has been given official sanction, debt service reduction has become an inescapable feature of the ongoing effort to manage and resolve the debt problem.This volume considers the implications of introducing debt and debt service reduction into the preexisting menu of policies and, more specifically, to suggest the conditions under which it can be expected to hasten the removal of the third world debt problem from the international economic agenda.