Postwar Economic Reconstruction and Lessons for the East Today
Postwar Economic Reconstruction and Lessons for the East Today

Author: Rudiger Dornbusch

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 1993

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 9780262041362

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The case studies in this book examine significant parallels between the situation in Eastern Europe today and the issues facing Europe and Japan after World War II, offering insights on what kinds of policy actions will be most effective in this difficult period of reconstruction.The breakup of the Soviet Union and the consequent extraordinary problems faced by Eastern European nations raise pressing economic questions. The case studies in this book examine significant parallels between the situation in Eastern Europe today and the issues facing Europe and Japan after World War II, offering insights on what kinds of policy actions will be most effective in this difficult period of reconstruction. The essays address such topics as the relative roles of government and the market; economic openness; industrial conversion from war to peacetime production; the roles of institutions, enterprises, the business community, and their work staffs; and external control of policy measures, of resources made available by the outside world, and of the general external environment. In their introductory chapter, the editors provide an overview that addresses the question of whether reconstruction can ever be managed smoothly.ContentsOpenness, Wage Restraint, and Macroeconomic Stability: West Germany's Road to Prosperity 1948-1959, H. Giersch, K. H. Paqué, M. Schmieding - The Lucky Miracle: Germany 1945-1951, H. Wolf - Inflation and Stabilization in Italy 1946-1951, M. De Cecco and F. Giavazzi - Economic Reconstruction in France 1945-1958, G. Saint-Paul - Reconstruction and the U.K. Postwar Welfare State: False Start and New Beginning, P. Minford - A Perspective on Postwar Reconstruction in Finland, J. Paunio - The Reconstruction and Stabilization of the Postwar Japanese Economy, K. Hamada and M. Kasuya - The Marshall Plan: History's Most Successful Structural Adjustment Program, J. B. De Long and B. Eichengreen - Lessons for Eastern Europe Today, 0. Blanchard, R. Portes, W. Nolling

The Postwar Economic Order
The Postwar Economic Order

Author: Albert O. Hirschman

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2022-11-22

Total Pages: 255

ISBN-13: 0231553692

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Winner, 2024 Best Scholarly Edition Award, European Society for the History of Economic Thought Years before he became renowned as one of the most original social scientists of the twentieth century, Albert O. Hirschman played an active role in the rebuilding of postwar Europe. Between 1946 and 1952, he worked as an economic analyst in the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Board of the United States, focusing on the reconstruction of Europe and the Marshall Plan. In that capacity, Hirschman wrote a number of reports about European economic policies, the first efforts at intra-European cooperation, and the uncertainties that surrounded the shaping of a new international economic order with the United States at its core. The Postwar Economic Order presents a collection of these interrelated reports, which offer incisive firsthand analysis of postwar Europe and give a behind-the-scenes view of American debates on European economic recovery. They feature nuanced and sophisticated discussion of topics such as the postwar “dollar shortage,” U.S.-European relations, and the first steps toward European economic integration. Hirschman provides original and perceptive interpretations of the struggles that European governments faced along their paths toward economic recovery. Throughout, Hirschman’s stylistic gifts and characteristic ways of reasoning are on full display as he highlights the counterintuitive and paradoxical aspects of economic and political processes. Shedding new light on the origins of European economic cooperation, this book provides unparalleled insight into the development of Hirschman’s thinking on economic development and reform.

The Battle of Bretton Woods
The Battle of Bretton Woods

Author: Benn Steil

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2013-02-24

Total Pages: 480

ISBN-13: 0691149097

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Recounts the events of the Bretton Woods accords, presents portaits of the two men at the center of the drama, and reveals Harry White's admiration for Soviet economic planning and communications with intelligence officers.

Forgotten Foundations of Bretton Woods
Forgotten Foundations of Bretton Woods

Author: Eric Helleiner

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2014-04-18

Total Pages: 317

ISBN-13: 0801470617

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Eric Helleiner's new book provides a powerful corrective to conventional accounts of the negotiations at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in 1944. These negotiations resulted in the creation of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank—the key international financial institutions of the postwar global economic order. Critics of Bretton Woods have argued that its architects devoted little attention to international development issues or the concerns of poorer countries. On the basis of extensive historical research and access to new archival sources, Helleiner challenges these assumptions, providing a major reinterpretation that will interest all those concerned with the politics and history of the global economy, North-South relations, and international development. The Bretton Woods architects—who included many officials and analysts from poorer regions of the world—discussed innovative proposals that anticipated more contemporary debates about how to reconcile the existing liberal global economic order with the development aspirations of emerging powers such as India, China, and Brazil. Alongside the much-studied Anglo-American relationship was an overlooked but pioneering North-South dialogue. Helleiner’s unconventional history brings to light not only these forgotten foundations of the Bretton Woods system but also their subsequent neglect after World War II.

An Extraordinary Time
An Extraordinary Time

Author: Marc Levinson

Publisher: Basic Books

Published: 2016-11-08

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 0465096565

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The decades after World War II were a golden age across much of the world. It was a time of economic miracles, an era when steady jobs were easy to find and families could see their living standards improving year after year. And then, around 1973, the good times vanished. The world economy slumped badly, then settled into the slow, erratic growth that had been the norm before the war. The result was an era of anxiety, uncertainty, and political extremism that we are still grappling with today. In An Extraordinary Time, acclaimed economic historian Marc Levinson describes how the end of the postwar boom reverberated throughout the global economy, bringing energy shortages, financial crises, soaring unemployment, and a gnawing sense of insecurity. Politicians, suddenly unable to deliver the prosperity of years past, railed haplessly against currency speculators, oil sheikhs, and other forces they could not control. From Sweden to Southern California, citizens grew suspicious of their newly ineffective governments and rebelled against the high taxes needed to support social welfare programs enacted when coffers were flush. Almost everywhere, the pendulum swung to the right, bringing politicians like Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan to power. But their promise that deregulation, privatization, lower tax rates, and smaller government would restore economic security and robust growth proved unfounded. Although the guiding hand of the state could no longer deliver the steady economic performance the public had come to expect, free-market policies were equally unable to do so. The golden age would not come back again. A sweeping reappraisal of the last sixty years of world history, An Extraordinary Time forces us to come to terms with how little control we actually have over the economy.

GATT and Global Order in the Postwar Era
GATT and Global Order in the Postwar Era

Author: Francine McKenzie

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2020-04-09

Total Pages: 339

ISBN-13: 1108494897

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This history of GATT explains how trade was implicated in foreign policy and international relations and connected to global order.

Postwar Japanese Economy, The; Its Development and Structure, 1937-1994, 2nd Ed.
Postwar Japanese Economy, The; Its Development and Structure, 1937-1994, 2nd Ed.

Author: Takafusa Nakamura

Publisher:

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13:

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The economy of Japan, with its high rates of growth, exemplary productivity levels, overall stability, and resilience in the face of financial and other crises, has been one of the wonders of the postwar world. In this book, which has since its first publication in 1981 been a standard text and reference work on the postwar economy, one of Japan's leading economist-scholars describes its workings, its roots in the prewar and wartime years, and its structure and institutions. For this revised second edition, the author has written several new chapters, added data bringing the discussion up to the 1990s, and reorganized the presentation.

Postwar Japanese Economy
Postwar Japanese Economy

Author: Mitsuhiko Iyoda

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2010-08-05

Total Pages: 167

ISBN-13: 1441963324

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Since the end of World War II, the Japanese economy has seen rapid changes and remarkable progress. It has also experienced a bubble economy and period of prolonged stagnation. The book seeks to address three major questions: What kind of changes have taken place in the postwar years? In what sense has there been progress? What lessons can be drawn from the experiences? The book is organized as follows: It begins with an overview of the postwar Japanese economy, using data to highlight historical changes. The four major economic issues in the postwar Japanese economy (economic restoration, rapid economic growth, the bubble economy and current topics) are addressed, with particular focus on the meaning of economic growth and the bubble economy. The next chapters examine the important economic issues for Japan related to a welfare-oriented society, including income distribution, asset distribution, and the relative share of income. Another chapter deals with the household structure of Japan, the pension issue, and the importance of the effect of demographic change on income distribution. The final chapter gives a brief summary, examines quality of life as a lesson of this research, and briefly outlines a proposal for a basic design towards achieving a high satisfaction level society. This book will be of interest to economists, economic historians and political scientists and would be useful as a text for any course on the Japanese economy.

Antitrust and the Formation of the Postwar World
Antitrust and the Formation of the Postwar World

Author: Wyatt C. Wells

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 023112399X

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In the wake of World War II, the United States devoted considerable resources to building a liberal economic order, which Washington believed was necessary to preserving not only prosperity but also peace after the war, and antitrust was a cornerstone of that policy. This fascinating book shows how the United States sought to impose its antitrust policy on other nations, especially in Europe and Japan.