Commodity Price Shocks and World Economies

It is well known that the unprecedented and uninterrupted world economic growth of two decades after the Second World War came to an abrupt end with the oil crisis of 1973. It is less well known that the prices of the internationally traded world non-fuel commodities of agricultural and mining origin also increased by 60% in 1973 and another 20% in 1974. It seems that by the 1970s the supply of these commodities could not keep pace with the fast growth of demand generated by the high and continuous growth of the world economy over two decades. These commodities are after all a crucial though small part of the raw materials for the production of industrial goods.