Price regimes, price series and price trends: oil shocks and counter-shocks in historical perspective

The paper studies the historical changes in oil prices focusing on the reciprocal interrelationships between: 1) the different institutional solutions that were historically used to fix prices, and to regulate oil transactions; 2) the different measurement procedures of oil prices that historically produced the series that are usually merged together; 3) the resulting cyclical alternation of upward and downward trends, with their contrasting effects on demand and investment. The methodological approach adopted makes reference to the sociology of knowledge and in particular to the historical study of quantification processes and their constitutive effects. Prices are interpreted then as performing different potentially contradictory functions at the same time, as the result of more or less temporary agreements between sellers and buyers, as a matter of further statistical analysis and elaboration into series, and then as signals to market operators and decision makers.The period under analysis centres on the 1980s countershock, starting from the end of WW2 and including the first and second oil shock, up to the First Gulf War.