world economy

The most methodical attempt to explain the economic history of Developed Market Economies (DMEs) since the Second World War can be found in the work of A. Maddison; see especially Phases of Capitalistic Development (Oxford, 1982); ‘Growth and slowdown in advanced capitalist economies: Techniques of quantitative assessment’, Journal of Economic Literature, 25 (1987), 649–98; ‘Growth and fluctuations in the world economy, 1870–1960’, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro Quarterly Review (September 1965); The World Economy in the 20th Century (OECD, Paris, 1989); and ‘A comparison of the levels of GDP per capita in developed and developing countries, 1800–1980’, The Journal of Economic History, 43 (1983), 159–78. See also I. Kravis and R. Lipsey, ‘The diffusion of economic growth in the world economy, 1950-1980’, in J. Kendrick (ed.), International Comparisons of Productivity and Causes of Its Slowdown (Cambridge, Mass., 1984). Excellent interpretations of the ‘Golden Age of Capitalism’ (1950–73), both in developed and developing economies, and the causes of its decline, can be found in S. Marglin and J. B. Schor (eds.), The Golden Age of Capitalism: Reinterpreting the Postwar Experience (Oxford, 1990), especially Marglin’s ‘Lessons of the Golden Age: An overview’, and A. Glyn, A. Hughes, A. Lipietz and A. Singh, ‘The rise and fall of the Golden Age’. See also the influential book by R. Rowthorn and J. Wells, De-industrialization and Foreign Trade (Cambridge, Eng., 1987). On developments in the world economy during the early years of the period, see S. Kuznets, Economic Growth and Structure (London, 1966).