Author
Abstract
[fre] Résumé Au lendemain de la seconde guerre mondiale, au Royaume-Uni le nouveau gouvernement travailliste veut mettre fin aux pénuries, maîtriser la reconversion, maintenir un niveau tolerable de stabilité économique, sociale et politique, rétablir l'équilibre de la balance des paiements tout en réduisant l'écart de productivité par rapport aux Etats-Unis. Malgré un certain nombre de réformes structurelles (nationalisations, planification), il ne parvient pas à accroître rapidement les niveaux de consommation de la population tout en détournant de l'investissement productif une part importante de la formation de capital nationale (logements et équipements collectifs, défense nationale). À l'origine de ces difficultés se trouve le refus de libérer les prix : la volonté de maintenir très bas le prix des produits de base contribue au freinage de l'inflation, mais aussi à sacrifier la modernisation de l'industrie. Ainsi la stabilité dans la reconstruction se paie du prix de la productivité. [eng] Abstract Immediately after the Second World War, the Labour government in Britain wanted to put an end to the shortages, control reconversion, maintain a tolerable level of economic, social and political stability, and improve the balance of payments while at the same time reducing the difference in productivity compared to the United States. Despite a certain number of structural reforms (nationalisations, planification) it did not succeed in raising the population's levels of consumption while investing a large part of national capital in housing and collective structures rather than productive investment. The roots of these difficulties are to be found in the refusal to liberate prices ; while the desire to keep the price of certain basic products extremely low did contribute to slowing down inflation, it was at the cost of sacrificing industrial modernisation. So stability during reconstruction was paid for in loss of productivity.
Suggested Citation
Martin Chick, 1999.
"Reconstruction, modernisation et production dans une économie planifiée : le Royaume-Uni, 1945-1951,"
Histoire, économie & société, Programme National Persée, vol. 18(2), pages 303-324.
Handle:
RePEc:prs:hiseco:hes_0752-5702_1999_num_18_2_2034
DOI: 10.3406/hes.1999.2034
Note: DOI:10.3406/hes.1999.2034
Download full text from publisher
Corrections
All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:prs:hiseco:hes_0752-5702_1999_num_18_2_2034. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.
If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.
We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .
If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Equipe PERSEE (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.persee.fr/collection/hes .
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through
the various RePEc services.