Probably The Biggest Macroeconomic Change Of Our Times: Fracking For Tight Oil

We would normally think of something like fracking as being the sort of technological change that is a residual when we’re talking about microeconomics. But there are times when such microeconomic changes lead to us reconsidering the macroeconomy. And I think this is one of those times. The implications of this one technology seem to me to be very large. So large that they’re going to change how we do think about, and plan public policy for, the macroeconomy.

This isn’t the only such technological change out there of course. I’ve mentioned before that I think the shipping container and the mobile telephone are such huge technological shifts that we’ve not really grasped their implications as yet. The container has made shipping goods hugely cheaper. The globalisation of the past 60 years (the first container ship set sail in 1956) hasn’t just been about public policy changes, the desire to lower tariffs and so on. (Forbes by Tim Worstall, Contributor)

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