The World Economy: History and Prospect

This monumental study is an account of the world economy from the eighteenth century to the twentieth, an analysis and prescription for the future, and a challenge to the neo-Keynesian theories of income determination and growth. It is based on some forty years of research and teaching. Originally published in 1978, the volume looks back over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It includes an analysis of how the world's population expanded from about 1 billion in 1800 to 4 billion in 1976, with some 6.5 billion in sight for the year 2000; an account of the expansion and distribution of industrial production and trade during this period; and an analysis of price and relative price movements since the eighteenth century. Rostow gives a detailed description of the Kondratieff long cycles in the relative scarcity and abundance of food and raw materials and reasons that the world economy entered the fifth Kondratieff upswing at the close of 1972. He also examines the changing pattern of business cycles over the whole sweep of modern economic growth and the failure of the post-1945 world economy to control inflation. The volume also includes short economic histories of twenty national economies responsible for 80 percent of the world's production, based on a collection of computerized aggregate and sectoral data. Each historical section leads naturally into one or more of the major problems dealt with in the final portion of the book, which looks to the future of the world food, population, energy, raw materials, the environment, and the tasks of national and international policy. Rostow argued, counter to the Limits to Growth doctrine, that the critical period for industrial civilization lay in the last twenty-five years of the twentieth century, rather than in the twenty-first century, and that what we did or failed to do in that generation would determine the shape of the longer future. No other economic history of this depth and breadth exists. It is a reference for economists, economic historians, and other social scientists as well as the informed lay reader. Front Matter....Pages i-xliii Front Matter....Pages 1-1 Two Centuries of Expansion in World Population....Pages 3-11 Population Dynamics among the Early-Comers to Industrialization....Pages 12-25 Population Dynamics among the Late-Comers to Industrialization....Pages 26-38 The Contemporary Scene: A Preliminary View....Pages 39-44 Front Matter....Pages 45-45 Industrial Growth and Its Diffusion....Pages 47-54 Growth and Structural Change....Pages 55-64 International Trade and Its Changing Distribution....Pages 65-80 Prices....Pages 81-90 Relative Prices and the Terms of Trade....Pages 91-99 Front Matter....Pages 101-101 Balanced and Unbalanced Growth....Pages 103-110 1790–1815....Pages 111-122 1815–1848....Pages 123-145 1848–1873....Pages 146-162 1873–1920....Pages 163-202 1920–1936....Pages 203-229 1936–1951....Pages 230-246 1951–1972....Pages 247-286 The Price Revolution of 1972–1976....Pages 287-298 Trend Periods Summarized....Pages 299-304 Front Matter....Pages 305-305 Cycles: Another Result of Unbalanced Growth....Pages 307-310 Front Matter....Pages 305-305 Cycles in the Eighteenth Century: 1700–1783....Pages 311-313 Cycles in the Classic Era: 1783–1914....Pages 314-330 Interwar Cycles: 1919–1939....Pages 331-337 Cycles in Growth Rates: 1945–1973 ....Pages 338-348 Inflation: The Price of Full Employment....Pages 349-357 Stagflation: 1974–1976 ....Pages 358-362 Front Matter....Pages 363-363 Aggregate and Sectoral Analysis of Growth....Pages 365-372 Great Britain....Pages 373-383 The United States....Pages 384-393 France....Pages 394-400 Germany....Pages 401-408 Sweden....Pages 409-415 Japan....Pages 416-425 Russia-USSR....Pages 426-437 Italy....Pages 438-447 Canada....Pages 448-455 Australia....Pages 456-465 Argentina....Pages 466-474 Turkey....Pages 475-480 Brazil....Pages 481-490 Front Matter....Pages 363-363 Mexico....Pages 491-499 Iran....Pages 500-508 India....Pages 509-521 China....Pages 522-537 Taiwan....Pages 538-546 Thailand....Pages 547-551 South Korea....Pages 552-560 Four Conclusions....Pages 561-568 Front Matter....Pages 569-569 Are There Limits to Growth?....Pages 571-581 Population and Food....Pages 582-590 Energy....Pages 591-609 Raw Materials....Pages 610-618 Pollution and the Environment....Pages 619-624 Political Economy in the Fifth Kondratieff Upswing....Pages 625-643 Tasks of International Cooperation....Pages 644-658 Back Matter....Pages 717-833