After four successive years of declining rates of economic growth in OECD countries, a fifth in 1981 now seems quite likely. The ‘second oil shock’ of 1979 must take much of the blame for the particularly slow growth this year and last. But in the year in which it occurred any depressive effect may well have been quite small, as it seems to have encouraged stock accumulation in anticipation of more rapid increases in price levels generally. And even before 1979 output had been rising much more slowly than in the years preceding the first ‘shock’ of 1973-4.