Maintenance crews were slow to make repairs, lowering their own costs but hurting production.
Palm had said a shortage of parts would hurt production of its latest Treo smartphone.
But decades of underinvestment have hurt production, which fell from 3.4m barrels a day in 2004 to 2.6m.
A long strike by machinists hurt production, which could suffer further if airlines cancel or defer orders during the downturn.
In theory, when falling crude prices hurt production, the refining business gets relief from lower input costs.
Price falls haven't hurt production in America: though the number of idle drilling rigs is still rising, only the least profitable wells are shutting down.
The strikes may further erode business and consumer confidence and hurt production in France, which is Europe's third-largest economy.
"At a certain point, there was a transition from viewing games as something that hurt production to a tacit realization that maybe games are doing us a service," Mollick told me.
Water is also an important component of the chip-making process, Mr. Handy said, and any cut in water supplies or an increase in contaminated water would hurt production.
A drought that hurt production in the country's mighty agricultural-exports industry was said to bear most of the blame.Political economyAmerican employers created just 69,000 jobs in May, the smallest number in a year and well below expectations.
The biggest mines in Chile, which produces a third of the world's copper were undamaged, but analysts feared that supply disruptions would hurt production from mid-size mines closer to the capital, Santiago, and lead to higher prices on Monday.
