Often lacking in mainstream analysis of the contemporary problems of the American economy is a historical context within which to situate current events. While quantitative change is clearly a most important focus for economic investigation, qualitative transformations in the nation's economic life also figure prominently in aggregate performance. For this reason, it is necessary to situate within analytic studies of recent economic difficulties in the United States a sharply focused awareness of long-term historical forces that have molded both the causes of and the reaction to contemporary economic decline.

The two essays in this part seek to provide this historical sensibility. Michael A. Bernstein provides a broad outline of American economic history in the late twentieth century. David M. Gordon offers a systematic look at the declining fortunes of the American economy in the postwar era.