Postwar growth: an overview

Abstract

Introduction One of the most difficult and intriguing tasks of a theory of economic growth is to combine both the disruptive and the integrative, the qualitatively changing and the quantitatively steady, aspects of the process. ( Kuznets, 1965: 23 ) We still refer to the past fifty years as the ‘postwar’: this is perhaps the best tribute to the fact that the ‘second Thirty Years War’ (1914–1945) marked a major watershed in the history of mankind. So much so that it proved to be a major intellectual watershed as well. In fact, until fairly recently, 1945 often marked the borderline of historical research, more recent decades being considered as the playing ground for journalists, political scientists and sociologists. Only the boldest, or most inconsiderate, scholars entered the field, and they did so at their own risk. The same can be said of economic historians: with few exceptions, they have been reluctant to apply the tools of their trade to the ‘postwar’ period, more often than not leaving it as the domain of applied economists. Things are changing, however, and the half century following the end of the Second World War is now increasingly seen as being ripe for historical investigation, much beyond the Marshall Plan years that have attracted much recent attention. This chapter aims at reviewing the performance of the European economy since 1945 in a longer-run perspective, which sees the period from 1913 to 1973 as being an exceptional one in the history of ‘modern economic growth’, in that it departed from the secular trend first (1913–45) by under-and then (1945–73) by overperforming. In this chapter, the European economy is tentatively seen as an aggregate, at least in fieri .

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