"We can certainly see the impacts of supply, particularly shortages in supply and increasing price. You only have to go back to Labor Day of 2005 after Hurricane Katrina," explains Dr. Walden, a professor of agricultural and resource economics.

"And there were also episodes in the 1970s when we had severe supply shortages of oil, and the price of oil and gas went skyrocketing. But economists who’ve studied the gas and oil markets in looking over … the past three decades really have found -- and this is really contrary to what most people would think -- they have really found that demand has been much more important in moving oil prices.

"For example in this decade, the big jumps that we have had in oil prices -- and of course leading to higher gas prices -- have really been caused by big jumps in the demand or usage of oil, particularly from countries like China and India.

"Now interestingly when we have increases in oil and gas prices that have been caused by increases in demand rather than supply, those increases have not been associated with a recession," he concludes.