Because energy constitutes a small proportion of the nation's total expenditure on inputs, most statistical studies suggest that higher energy prices did not contribute much to the slowdown [in the 1970s].

My Microeconomics textbook is even worse: energy is not in the index. The reasons for this lack of consideration have been understandable in the past, as I will discuss later, but I believe will pose serious problems in the future."

This shouldn't surprise you.  Laissez-faire economics is not based on any kind of reality.  It is nothing more than a modern religion, a "MEANS OF CONTROL".  Read up on Francois Quesnay and the origins of the physiocrats...

==AC

"Historically, this pattern is a familiar one. Kings and emperors of bygone days were always backed up by priests and religions whose job it was to promote an ideology which served the interests of the ruler. The Roman Emperor Constantine and the English King Henry VIII both replaced state religions so as to better suit their political objectives. Today we don't have royal rulers in the West, but we have a ruling elite. Mainstream economists, trained in business school cloisters, function as a priesthood for this elite - muttering unintelligible technical incantations and then declaring absurdities to be truth. The corporate mass-media reinforces the orthodoxy in a thousand ways every day - in news and commentary and even in entertainment fare. Mumbo jumbo has served rulers down through the ages, and it is still being used today. As science or as common sense, the laissez-faire orthodoxy stands on a par with the belief in a flat Earth."
http://cyberjournal.org/cj/guide/world_today.shtml