Review by Choice Review
A timely volume on certain debates on the volatility of oil prices. Verleger forcefully discounts the idea of oil as a "strategic commodity" being in need of nonmarket intervention by offering market solutions within the now proliferating futures markets in global energy. He maintains that in the face of wholesale failure of all commodity agreements, neither negotiating for the maintenance of OPEC surplus capacity nor relying on the strategic petroleum reserves, limiting US oil imports, or establishing special domestic tax incentives and subsidies for the oil industry, would stabilize oil prices. Verleger instead opts for the petroleum market as the best and most efficient alternative, though he cautions against its "imperfection" and "immaturity" (see Chapters 2 and 5). The downside of such debates in this book, however, is that the dialogue is exclusively within a narrow band of economics known as the neoclassical theory, in which there can be no internal mechanism to account for the emerging economic crises, particularly where it concerns the restructuring of capital globally. Notwithstanding, this is an important book by a keen writer on oil. All academic and professional libraries. C. Bina; Harvard University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
