Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

Winning the War, Losing the Peace? Britain's Post-War Recovery in a West German Mirror

Contents:

Author Info

  • Eichengreen, Barry
  • Ritschl, Albrecht

Abstract

This paper places Anglo-German growth after World War II in a long-term comparative perspective. Reviewing explanations of why post-war Germany is more dynamic than Britain, we evaluate arguments stressing institutional change, catching-up, and country-specific long-term experience. Examining competition policy and macroeconomic demand management, we find only a limited role for institutional changes and an impressive degree of institutional continuity in each country. Likewise, in inter-temporal perspective the scope for catching up between Germany and Britain is unimpressive. We find growth and productivity differences to be rooted in each country’s starting position relative to its own steady state. During the 1950s, the British economy grows along a steady state established between the wars, while the German economy experiences a very pronounced rebound effect from the war shock. After its return to the steady state, German growth performance is very similar to that of Britain and by no means more impressive.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
File URL: http://www.cepr.org/pubs/dps/DP1809.asp
Download Restriction: CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.

Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers in its series CEPR Discussion Papers with number 1809.

as in new window
Length:
Date of creation: Mar 1998
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:1809

Contact details of provider:
Postal: Centre for Economic Policy Research, 77 Bastwick Street, London EC1V 3PZ
Phone: 44 - 20 - 7183 8801
Fax: 44 - 20 - 7183 8820

Order Information:
Email:

Related research

Keywords: Britain; Germany; Institutions; post-war growth; Reconstruction;

Find related papers by JEL classification:

References

No references listed on IDEAS
You can help add them by filling out this form.

Citations

Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
as in new window

Cited by:
  1. Christophe Kamps, 2004. "New Estimates of Government Net Capital Stocks for 22 OECD Countries 1960-2001," IMF Working Papers 04/67, International Monetary Fund.

Lists

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Corrections

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:1809

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ().

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.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with 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 profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.