Stagflation (stagnation and inflation in one word) depicts a time period when an economy is not only suffering from a recession (declining GDP), but high unemployment and inflation rates as well. Usually unemployment and inflation are inversely related, which makes stagflation a rare occurrence. It first happened in the 1970s, when OPEC put an oil embargo on the United States, resulting in oil prices skyrocketing to three times the standard value at that time. As of September 2023, the price of oil fell by 20 percent in comparison to last year after having increased by 76 perent as a result of Russian invasion of Ukraine. The has been signs of stagflation in some countries through 2022 and 2023, but falling inflation rates indicate that the worst has been avoided.

The 1973-1975 recession marked the end of a remarkably prosperous period for developed economies. Apart from the United States, who experienced a brief recession in 1969-70, the other nations had enjoyed a period of uninterrupted growth in the 25 years leading up to this event. Japan in particular had the fastest growth of any major economy. This ended, however, following the 1973 oil crisis, which saw the member states of the OAPEC (Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries) place an embargo on the nations who supported Israel during the Yom Kippur War, particularly the U.S., who supplied arms to Israel. As a result, oil prices quadrupled in some periods; the U.S. and most of its major economic partners then went into recession due to their dependency on oil imports. Additional factors exacerbated the effects of the recession in each country, such as the miners' strike in the United Kingdom, or Nixon's unstable economic policies in the early 1970s. It was not until 1976 when the major OECD economies would come out of their recession, although real GDP growth rates would not return to the consistent highs experienced in the 1950s and 1960s. Additionally, while GDP growth resumed within a few years, inflation rates and unemployment rates generally remained higher going into the 1980s.

The decades that followed the Second World War were among the most prosperous in modern history, and are referred to as the Golden Age of Capitalism in many countries. This period came to an end, however, with the 1973-1975 recession. Differences across the bloc Across the OECD member states, there was a significant drop in real GDP growth over the two decades, falling from an average of five percent annual growth in the 1960s to just 3.5 percent annually in most of the 1970s. Of all OECD countries shown here, Japan experienced the highest rate of real GDP growth in both decades, although it dropped from 11 to six percent between these years (Japan's real GDP growth was still higher in the 1970s than the other members' rates in the 1960s). Switzerland saw the largest relative decline over the two periods, with growth in the 1970s below one third of its growth rate in the 1960s. What caused the end of rapid growth? The Yom Kippur War between Israel and its Arab neighbors (primarily Egypt and Syria) resulted in the Arab oil-producing states placing an embargo on Israel's Western allies. This resulted in various energy and economic crises, compounded by other issues such as the end of the Bretton Woods financial system, which had far-reaching consequences for the OECD bloc. Additionally, the cost of agricultural goods and raw materials increased, and there was a very rare case of stagflation across most of the world's leading economies.

During the period beginning roughly in the mid-1980s until the Global Financial Crisis (2007-2008), the U.S. economy experienced a time of relative economic calm, with low inflation and consistent GDP growth. Compared with the turbulent economic era which had preceded it in the 1970s and the early 1980s, the lack of extreme fluctuations in the business cycle led some commentators to suggest that macroeconomic issues such as high inflation, long-term unemployment and financial crises were a thing of the past. Indeed, the President of the American Economic Association, Professor Robert Lucas, famously proclaimed in 2003 that "central problem of depression prevention has been solved, for all practical purposes". Ben Bernanke, the future chairman of the Federal Reserve during the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) and 2022 Nobel Prize in Economics recipient, coined the term 'the Great Moderation' to describe this era of newfound economic confidence. The era came to an abrupt end with the outbreak of the GFC in the Summer of 2007, as the U.S. financial system began to crash due to a downturn in the real estate market.

Causes of the Great Moderation, and its downfall

A number of factors have been cited as contributing to the Great Moderation including central bank monetary policies, the shift from manufacturing to services in the economy, improvements in information technology and management practices, as well as reduced energy prices. The period coincided with the term of Fed chairman Alan Greenspan (1987-2006), famous for the 'Greenspan put', a policy which meant that the Fed would proactively address downturns in the stock market using its monetary policy tools. These economic factors came to prominence at the same time as the end of the Cold War (1947-1991), with the U.S. attaining a new level of hegemony in global politics, as its main geopolitical rival, the Soviet Union, no longer existed. During the Great Moderation, the U.S. experienced a recession twice, between July 1990 and March 1991, and again from March 2001 tom November 2001, however, these relatively short recessions did not knock the U.S. off its growth path. The build up of household and corporate debt over the early 2000s eventually led to the Global Financial Crisis, as the bursting of the U.S. housing bubble in 2007 reverberated across the financial system, with a subsequent credit freeze and mass defaults.

Czechoslovakia's economy saw out the 1970s and 1980s with a positive trade balance and current account, making it just one of three Eastern Bloc states (along with Romania and the USSR) to do so. Overall, Czechoslovakia exported approximately 400 million U.S. dollars more goods and services than was imported in these two decades.

During the "Golden Age of Capitalism", from 1950 to 1973, GDP grew by annual averages of just under five percent in Western Europe*, four percent in the U.S., and ten percent in Japan. This period of prosperity came to an end with the recession of 1973-1975, however GDP growth rates did not return to their previous levels when the recession ended, as growth was fairly sporadic in the 1970s and then much slower throughout the 1980s. From 1973 to 1987, GDP grew annually at just two fifth of the Golden Age's rate in Europe and Japan, while the U.S.' annual rates were somewhat closer.

One major difference between the two given periods was that the U.S. was the dominant and most influential economy of all developed (non-communist) countries in the 1950s and 1960s, however, the 1970s and 1980s saw Japan and the European Communities (led by West Germany and France) emerge as major economic powers in their own right. While the U.S. remained the most powerful country in the world, other developed nations became more economically autonomous, and began asserting their own influence internationally.

Throughout the 1970s, Yugoslavia's GDP grew each year at annual rates ranging from 3.6 to 8.5 percent. Unlike the rest of the Eastern Bloc, Yugoslavia had a socialist economy with elements of market capitalism and was more open to trade outside of the communist sphere. However, Yugoslavia was greatly affected by the oil crises of the period, and its national debt (to both the Eastern and Western Blocs) and unemployment rates both rose significantly in the late 1970s. These economic difficulties persisted into the 1980s, where GDP growth fell in several years until the eventual collapse of the economy at the end of the decade.

Industrial output across the OECD fell by significant amount between the 1960s and 1970s, when annual averages are compared. Overall, the OECD saw industrial output grow by almost six percent in each year between 1960 and 1970, whereas this growth fell to just 3.5 percent per year between 1971 and 1978. The largest individual decline of the major economies was observed in Japan, who saw a difference of nine percent between the two periods. The largest proportional decline of the given countries, however, was observed in Switzerland, where annual industrial output between 1971 and 1978 was less than one tenth of the rate in the previous period. The primary reason for this decline was due to the 1973-1975 recession that resulted from the oil embargo of 1973, which highlighted the developed world's increasing dependency on foreign oil imports. This recession also marked the end of the post-war economic boom, but saw the transition of economies such as Japan, West Germany, and wider European Economic Community in general (i.e. the predecessor to the EU) into global economic powers.

The Covid-19 pandemic saw growth fall by 2.2 percent, compared with an increase of 2.5 percent the year before. The last time the real GDP growth rates fell by a similar level was during the Great Recession in 2009, and the only other time since the Second World War where real GDP fell by more than one percent was in the early 1980s recession. The given records began following the Wall Street Crash in 1929, and GDP growth fluctuated greatly between the Great Depression and the 1950s, before growth became more consistent.

Net national incomes have grown globally, growing from 694 U.S. dollars in 1970 to 9,750 in 2021. Much of this growth can be attributed to improvements in overall global development, as economies in developing countries have grown rapidly. Net national incomes grew steadily from the 1970s to the 2000s, and then experienced a sharper increase during the 2000s until the Great Recession, falling slightly in 2008.

Between the 1950s and 1970s, employment grew exponentially during the most prosperous period in modern European history, particularly in the manufacturing and non-agricultural sectors (services, public sector, education). Total employment generally grew at a slower rate than in the two specified sectors, as the mechanization of agriculture, mining, and construction led to fewer working in the primary industry of the economy. The automation of Ireland's agricultural sector, along with the government's protectionist policies and mass emigration, saw Ireland become the only state where employment fell in these years (despite the expansion of other industries); it was not until the 1960s when Ireland would make ground on the rest of Western Europe's economic progress.

Employment growth was largely driven by the expansion of manufacturing and non-agricultural sectors of the economy, although these developments varied by country. Belgium was the country with the largest discrepancy between these sectors, as non-agricultural employment grew, on average, five times faster than manufacturing's employment rate. This discrepancy was due to Belgium's already-established industrial sector, which occupied a much larger share of economic output at the beginning of this period than most other countries. Employment in non-agricultural and non-industrial sectors also boomed in this period due to the enlargement of the welfare state, the emergence of service industries, and secondary and higher education expansion.

The period between 1950 and 1973, known as the "Golden Age of capitalism" in the west, was the most prosperous period in Europe's modern history. The economic boom in the post-war period saw GDP grow by an average of almost four percent in Western and Eastern Europe, and almost five percent in the south. Although the west was the most technologically advanced of the three, this period did see a significant amount of catching up in the other two regions, whose rapid industrialization and urbanization changed the lives of its citizens forever. Recession hits the west The recession of 1973-1975 brought this economic and industrial growth to an end, however, as conflict in the Middle East saw oil prices skyrocket. Virtually all of Western Europe's industrial powers went into recession, and this had a detrimental knock-on effect in Poland and Romania due to their indebtedness to the west. While the recession ended in most countries by 1976, factors such as unemployment, inflation, and industrial output often remained high until the 1980s. The 1980s and 1990s also saw the rapid economic growth of countries such as Ireland and Finland. However, growth was much slower in these decades for most western economies than it had been in the 1950s and1960s. Collapse of communism The 1970s marked the beginning of the economic decline in Eastern Europe, as the command economies of the East Bloc could not maintain pace with the capitalist west and failed to adapt to the challenges that emerged in this period. Communism in Eastern Europe eventually ended around the early 1990s, and the largest power, the Soviet Union, was dissolved. This resulted in severe economic hardships in the former communist states, and recovery in the former-Soviet states did not begin until the late 1990s. The effects of communism's collapse in Europe was so severe that GDP in the east actually fell by an average of 0.9 percent per year between 1973 and 1998

Based on net material product (NMP)*, the economies of Eastern Europe outgrew the Soviet Union for most of the 1970s and 1980s, apart from the late 1970s and early 1980s when conflict in the Middle East and western recessions led to economic downturns in several COMECON states (particularly Poland). It becomes clear when looking at the combined growth of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union over these two decades that the Soviet Union's economy was by far the largest in the Eastern Bloc, as the overall average is more in line with the USSR's trend line than that of Eastern Europe. Across the Eastern Bloc, the rate of NMP's growth ranged between five and nine percent throughout most of the 1970s, before ranging between two and four percent for most of the 1980s. As communism collapsed in the late 1980s, NMP rates fell drastically across the COMECON region. The average Eastern Europe NMP fell by 12 percent (East Germany's MNP fell by 19.5 percent alone) compared to four percent in the Soviet Union.

For most of the 20th century, Ireland stood out as one of the poorest countries in Western Europe, not experience the same post-war boom in prosperity that was felt by virtually all other countries in the region. At the onset of the 1973-1975 Recession, Ireland's GDP per capita was less than 60 percent of GDP per capita in the European Union and less than a quarter of GDP per capita in the U.S. Catching up in the 1980s By the 1980s, a wave of foreign investment saw Ireland's export sector grow exponentially, and between 1975 and 1990, Ireland had the second-fastest growth of exports in the world (behind Japan). Additionally, as Ireland joined the European Communities in 1973, it became more integrated into the European economy; before 1973, around three-quarters of Ireland's exports went to the United Kingdom, but this fell to one-third by the 1990s. Ireland's period of industrialization was relatively short in comparison to its neighbors, as it transitioned from an agriculture-based economy to a producer of high-tech products and services. Ireland's low tax rate and other incentives also attracted many American tech companies in the 1980s, such as Apple, Intel, and Microsoft, who were keen on establishing a presence in the European Union. The Celtic Tiger Named after the Four Asian Tigers (Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan), which experienced rapid economic growth in the 1970s and 1980s, the period of prosperity between the 1990s and 2000s in Ireland has been dubbed the "Celtic Tiger." Over this time, Ireland's GDP per capita grew to exceed the average in the EU by 10 percent in 2000, and it would eventually surpass that of the U.S. in 2003. Ireland was severely impacted by the financial crisis of 2008 due to the instability of its property sector and extensive lending by banks, and it was the first European economy to go into recession. By the late 2010s, most sectors of the economy had returned to pre-recession levels, and today, Ireland's GDP per capita remains among the top in the world, second in the EU only to Luxembourg.

A drought in South Africa in 1990 incurred an economic loss of about 1.96 billion U.S. dollars. Storm Idai, in Mozambique in 2019, also had an economic impact of 1.96 billion U.S. dollars. These two events resulted in the largest economic losses from climate disasters recorded in Africa between 1970 and 2019.

Drought risk in Africa

Droughts have caused an enormous number of human losses. The deadliest natural events in Africa are droughts and caused thousands of fatalities, especially in the 1970s and 1980s in the Horn of Africa and Eastern Africa. Many countries with the highest risk of droughts are in Africa. In 2020, Somalia was the most endangered country in the world. Among the ten countries most at risk of droughts, eight were African.

Economic impact of droughts

Between 1970 and 2019, droughts have impacted heavily the economies of various African countries, including Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Namibia, and South Africa. During the last decades, droughts cost Zimbabwe 0.14 percent of the country's GDP. Five of the 10 most expensive weather, climate, and water -related disasters in Africa over the last decades were droughts.

The graph shows China's share in global gross domestic product adjusted for purchasing-power-parity until 2023, with a forecast until 2029. In 2023, China's share was about 18.75 percent. China's global GDP share Due to the introduction of capitalist market principles in 1978, China's economic market began to show immense change and growth. China's real GDP growth ranged at 5.2 percent in 2023. China's per capita GDP is also expected to continue to grow, reaching 12,600 U.S. dollars in 2023. Comparatively, Luxembourg and Ireland have some of the world’s largest GDP per capita with 129,800 U.S. dollars and 104,300 U.S. dollars, respectively, as of 2023. China is the largest exporter and second largest importer of goods in the world and is also among the largest manufacturing economies. The country also ranges among the world's largest agricultural producers and consumers. It relies heavily on intensive agricultural practices and is the world's largest producer of pigs, chickens, and eggs. Livestock production has been heavily emphasized since the mid-1970s. China’s chemical industry has also seen growth with a heavy focus on fertilizers, plastics, and synthetic fibers. China's use of chemical fertilizers amounted to approximately 50.8 million metric tons in 2022. GDP composition in China Industry and construction account for slightly less than 40 percent of China's GDP. Some of the major industries include mining and ore processing, food processing, coal, machinery, textiles and apparel, and consumer products. Almost half of China's output is dedicated to investment purposes. However, as the country tends to support gross output, innovation, technological advancement, and even quality are often lacking.

Labor unions, also known as trade unions, reached their peak in the advanced industrial countries of the G7 and Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development (OECD) in the late twentieth century; since the 1980s however, their memberships have declined drastically, in some countries by as much as 50 percent. The labor movement arose in the nineteenth century to represent workers' interests in collective bargaining and to protests against poor wages and work conditions. From their peak in the twentieth century, unions have declined to represent much smaller numbers of workers today, in many countries being active mainly among public sector workers, such as in the United States. The rise and fall of union power In their rise during the twentieth century, labor unions were tightly connected to political parties of social democratic or socialist bent, while also being connected with Christian democrats in some continental European countries. As these parties came to power in the post-WWII period, unions were institutionalized into a system of social partnership with employers and the government in many countries. This agreement minimized labor disputes, while focusing on increasing productivity, which led to a period of unprecedented economic growth. As this system ran up against intractable economic problems in the 1970s, however, parties came to power who pursued a 'neoliberal' agenda of liberalization of the labor market and the privatization of nationalized companies. Since the late 1970s, these policies have caused union membership to decline drastically, as unions could engage in the same level of collective bargaining in a more interconnected and globalized international economy.

The misery index is an economic indicator that combines the unemployment rate and the inflation rate. Although it is rare for both unemployment and inflation to be high at the same time, there have been instances of this occurring, such as during episodes of stagflation in the 1970s. Due to high levels of inflation since late 2021, the misery index in March 2023 is at a relatively high rate of 8.49 percent.

The economic failures of the communist began to show throughout the 1970s, as the oil crises of 1973 to 1980 exposed the Eastern Bloc's many financial instabilities. The 1973-1975 Recession in the West had a knock-on effect on the Eastern Bloc, particularly on Poland and Romania, as Western debtors began demanding repayment, imports into the Eastern Bloc became more expensive, and exports were no longer in high demand. Growth rates also began to fall further at the end of the decade, as the post-war economic boom ended. At the beginning of the 1970s, Eastern Europe's debt totaled six billion U.S. dollars; by the end of the decade, it was almost 80 billion. Although austerity in the 1980s did bring some measure of control to the Eastern economies, it only limited the growth rate of indebtedness across the region, which eventually rose to 110 billion dollars (over a third of which belonged to Poland alone) when European communism fell, around 1990.

In 1950, at the end of the recovery period that followed the Second World War, GDP per capita across the Eastern Bloc varied greatly by country. Czechoslovakia, the most industrialized country in the Bloc after East Germany, had a GDP per capita that was 69 percent of the rate across Western European** countries. In contrast, Romania's GDP per capita was less than a quarter of the Western European average in 1950. 1950-1989 Generally speaking, Eastern European economies grew faster and made gains on those of the west (not including Mediterranean region) in the 1950s and 1960s, however, a series of recessions and increasing debts meant that this gap widened in the 1970s and 1980s. By 1989, as communism in Europe came to an end, the difference between overall GDP per capita in the Eastern and Western Blocs returned to a similar rate as in 1950, although it varied by country. The Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, and Poland, three of the larger economies of those given, had a lower share of western GDP per capita in 1989 than in 1950, while the smaller economies of the Balkans saw an increase. 1989-2000 Between 1989 and 2000, the European Union's GDP per capita grew faster than in the former Eastern Bloc countries. However, the end of communism did negatively impact EU economies in the early 1990s. Poland was the only Eastern Bloc country to make gains on the west in these years, although this was more to do with its poor economy in the 1980s. The former-Soviet states, in particular, saw GDP per capita drop below one-quarter of the European Union's rate over this decade, as post-Soviet economic recovery did not realistically begin until the late 1990s.