OPEC and the non-oil developing countries in the 1970s

Abstract

This paper assesses the nature of the economic relationships which evolved between members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and the non-oil less developed countries in the several years following the oil shocks of 1973 and 1974. Since these relationships can be appraised only against the background of the world economic system and its institutions at that time, attention is first focused on those issues. It is argued that no simple or easily interpreted economic relationship existed between these economic groups of developing countries; all are tied up in the matrix of the wider world economic system