The work reported in this book is the outcome of a network of (mainly) European economists which operated during 1992/3 sponsored by the SPES programme of the European Commission, directed by Nicholas Crafts and Gianni Toniolo and administered by CEPR. The reawakening of economists' interest in growth since the mid-1980s has been one of the principal reasons for this project. At the same time it is now quite a while since the last exercise of a similar kind, the much used and respected collection edited by Boltho (The European Economy: Growth and Crisis, OUP, 1982).

Members of the network on European growth devoted a good deal of effort to exploring quantitative aspects of economic growth with a view to improving understanding of and facilitating access to the key raw materials of a database for studying post-war growth. In addition, the evidence on key topics such as convergence, investment in broad capital and trend growth was evaluated on a cross-sectional basis. This work is reported here and is accompanied by a complementary volume (Crafts and Toniolo, 1996) based on a series of case studies of post-war growth in individual counries written in such a way to give the reader a genuinely comparative picture.

The case studies volume also contains chapters on important aspects of the general experience of growth and an overview chapter which is intended to provide the context into which the country studies fit. This organization permitted the establishment of a common format for the country studies and facilitated exchange of ideas and mutual criticism of initial drafts with the result that the chapters are more comparable than would otherwise have been the case.