This volume collects together Sir Alec Cairncross' most important contributions to the economic history of the post-1939 period. They address such major issues as the role of economists in the 2nd ...World War, the significance of the Marshall plan and Britain's relative economic decline. Together they demonstrate a keen insight into the changing role of the economist in government and the gradual transformation of the economic landscape.
First published in 1961, this work is a compendium of essays written by esteemed economist Sir Alexander Cairncross, pertaining to the theme of economic development. A wide cross-section of factors ...are taken into account in this extensive collection of articles, amongst which are the importance of investment and technical progress; trade; administration and planning; and the role of education.
ECONOMISTS AND ENGINEERS Cairncross, Sir Alec
Economic Ideas and Government Policy,
1996
Book Chapter
Margaret Gowing is one of the few economists of her generation who has
shown a particular interest in engineering. Her study of the development of
the atomic bomb is a commentary on events of the ...highest importance, in
which technical, political and economic influences interacted in a way that
economists should be particularly well equipped to explain, but rarely
investigate. It is just such a mixture of influences that has come to dominate
life in industrial countries; and it is increasingly futile to limit attention to
any one of these influences to the exclusion of the others in explaining the
past or providing for the future. Conversely, in the assessment of situations
and projects and in framing recommendations for action, it is increasingly
necessary for those who analyse economic, social and political factors to cooperate with those whose province is technology.
Life in postwar Europe begins for the average historian with the Marshall
Plan. He hurries past the first two postwar years as if nothing much happened
and fastens on the more dramatic episode that ...followed. Europe is seen as
rescued from the verge of catastrophe by American generosity and steered
in the direction of the Common Market (now promised at last). Was it really
like that? Was it indeed the Marshall Plan that turned the postwar years into
a Golden Age in which all Europe moved forward together, free from any
major depression for thirty years and from war for longer than ever before?
Do we owe it to the Marshall Plan that things turned out so much better
after the Second World War than after the First?
These two books‡ might seem to have a great deal in common. Both deal
with the five years of Labour government from 1974 to 1979 (although
Britton covers the first eight years of Conservative ...government as well); the
focus of both is on policy rather than events; and both aim to provide an
assessment of policy in terms of its effectiveness and appropriateness. That
is, they are more concerned to isolate the part played by government in the
economic history of those years and draw morals from the record than to
provide an account of events in which the actions of government are only
part of the story. They accept that any assessment of policy has to be made
in relation to feasible alternatives (‘counterfactuals’) and make use of
mathematical models to demonstrate what success policies had.
The English, it is said, take their pleasures sadly, and brooding on the reasons
for their industrial decline is now one of their pleasures. Book after book on
the subject has appeared until writing ...such books has become something of
a growth industry. The more British industry declines the more this small
part of it expands.
The attempt by Hugh Dalton, Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1945-7, to
drive down interest rates in the United Kingdom immediately after the Second
World War has attracted much attention from monetary ...historians. Less well
known is the subsequent experience of monetary policy between the
departure of Dalton from the Treasury in November 1947 and the resignation
of Thorneycroft just over ten years later. Yet it was this experience which
gave rise to the appointment of the Radcliffe Committee in April 1957 and
coloured the recommendations of the Committee two years later.
Two years elapsed between the end of the war in Europe and General
Marshall’s speech in Harvard heralding the Marshall Plan. What happened
in those two years? What problems did European ...reconstruction raise? How
were those problems seen and by what strategies was it proposed to overcome
them?
The spectacular increase in international trade since the war has been one
of the great success stories of the postwar period. Since 1948 the volume of
world trade has grown thirteenfold-much faster ...than the growth of
production over the same period. Yet in the early postwar years there was
no expectation of such an outcome. Between 1913 and 1938-or indeed
1948-the volume of trade had grown only by about 10 per cent and there
was little prospect of a return to what seemed then the remarkable growth
of the years before the First World War when world trade grew nearly fourfold
in forty years.
