This volume collects Professor Parker's major writings on American agricultural and industrial history, including some previously unpublished essays. Taken as a whole, these essays give an account of why and how the United States grew rich in the nineteenth century, as well as a background against which to judge the present position of the economy and its international position. Professor Parker focuses on the nineteenth-century experience of the three regions of the United States - northeast, south and midwest, and shows wherein lay the sources of their wealth and growth into a flourishing nation. A final chapter, looking at European development from an American perspective, is especially timely in view of the recent movements toward integration and democratisation in the 'mother continent'.

This 1988 book focuses on the real puzzle of 1930s America: why did the economy fail to recover from the downturn of 1929–33? The author presents a convincing case that there were important long-run tendencies within the economy that are crucial to understanding this failure. From a wealth of detail about individual industries emerges a bold thesis about the interwar economy that emphasizes both cyclical and secular factors and shows that some sectors of the economy demonstrated technological dynamism during the 1930s. His approach cuts across the more traditional explanations which have been for the most part tests of economic theories rather than historical explanations of the depression.

The essays in this book explore the forces behind modern economic growth and, in particular, the causes of the extraordinary surge of growth since the Second World War. The introductory essay is an extended treatment of how economists now view the growth process and its causes. Other essays consider the contributions of capital formation, education, and the changed nature of industries and occupations. Professor Abramovitz asks why elevated incomes failed to bring the social progress and personal satisfaction that people had looked for. The final chapters in the book take up the causes of our discontent and consider whether the Welfare State has itself become an obstacle to further economic progress.The essays in this book explore the forces behind modern economic growth and, in particular, the causes of the extraordinary surge of growth since the Second World War. The introductory essay is an extended treatment of how economists now view the growth process and its causes. Other essays consider the contributions of capital formation, education, and the changed nature of industries and occupations. Professor Abramovitz asks why elevated incomes failed to bring the social progress and personal satisfaction that people had looked for. The final chapters in the book take up the causes of our discontent and consider whether the Welfare State has itself become an obstacle to further economic progress.

This is a history of America's use of wage and price controls from colonial times to Richard Nixon's experiment with controls in the 1970s. It explores the impact of controls on prices and productivity, side-effects such as the growth of black markets and the expansion of government, and the relationship between controls and monetary policy. The central conclusion is that, contrary to the conventional wisdom, there are situations where the net effect of controls can be positive. In particular, temporary controls may reduce the unemployment and lost output usually associated with disinflation.

This is a collection of essays by Simon Kuznets, winner of the 1971 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, published posthumously. It represents the primary concerns of his research at a late phase of his career, as well as themes from his earlier work. The first four chapters deal with 'modern economic growth'. Chapters five to seven introduce the main theme of the remainder of the volume: interrelations between demographic change and income inequality. Chapters eight to ten draw on a wider set of data to make comparisons of income inequality among societies at widely different levels of development. Chapter eleven returns to data for the United States to develop more fully the importance of differing childbearing patterns for income inequality. In the introduction Professor Richard Easterlin discusses the relationship of the essays to the balance of Kuznets's writings. In the afterword Professor Robert Fogel discusses the methodologies favoured by Kuznets.

Michael Hogan shows how The Marshall Plan was more than an effort to put American aid behind the economic reconstruction of Europe. American officials hoped to refashion Western Europe into a smaller version of the integrated single-market and mixed capitalist economy that existed in the United States. Professor Hogan's emphasis on integration is part of a major reinterpretation that sees the Marshall Plan as an extension of American domestic and foreign-policy developments stretching back through the interwar period to the Progressive Era.

In the political economy of energy, World War II was a significant watershed: it accelerated the transition from dependence on coal to petroleum and natural gas. At the same time, mobilization provided an unprecedented experience in the management of energy markets by a forced partnership of business and government. In this 1985 book, Vietor covers American policy from 1945 to 1980. For readers convinced that big business contrived the energy crisis of the 1970s, this story will be disappointing, but enlightening. For those committed to theories of regulatory capture or public interest reform it should be frustrating. More than a history of government policy making, this book provides us with an innovative and insightful approach to the study of business-government relations in modern America. For managers, bureaucrats, and anyone interested in seeing a more effective national industrial policy, this history should put the relationship of business and government in a critical new perspective.