History shows that what we got instead was an oil price shock to add to our already considerable self-imposed troubles, and so spent the next decade-and-a-half trying to return to some sort of reasonable equilibrium. I do not want to say anything about that period because that is another story. 5.
Conclusion The period that is loosely described as the 1950s and 1960s really covers the nearly three decades between the end of the Second World War and the first oil price shock known as OPEC I. Macro-economic policies were successful for most of this time in that they avoided the deflation that had characterised the 1930s, and yet did not move too far in the inflationary direction.