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Reviews
| The European Economy since 1945: Coordinated Capitalism and Beyond, by Barry Eichengreen. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2007. 495 pages. $35.00 cloth.
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| Although only two chapters (5 and 10) deal with Eastern Europe, this study analyzes in detail the economic evolution of Europe from the destruction of World War II to postwar boom, and later from industrial to post-industrial based economies. Eichengreen develops a clear and cogent argument showing that both Western and Eastern Europe were well equipped after World War II for catching up with the industrial giant of the day, the United States. Well-developed state institutions existed that could direct or plan the European national economies in a variety of ways to repair war damage, re-build infrastructure, and re-develop and expand industrial capacity in economic sectors that required relatively little technological innovation but considerable capital. European state institutions were also well equipped to provide this needed capital and thus were instrumental in aiding the unprecedented expansion of the postwar European economy. This advantage, though, began to disappear progressively as the type of investment and development required after the catch-up with the United States had been accomplished (at least in Western Europe). Once that point was reached, progress would be based more and more on technological breakthroughs or adaptations that are produced more plentifully in less regulated and financially more flexible economies than in those where the state plays a dominant role. This argument is convincing and well supported by the evidence presented. |
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The various chapters cover, generally in chronological order, the details of this economic evolution through examples drawn from several European countries' experiences. The first four chapters, and chapter seven, explain the economic booms in Western Europe after World War II. The issue of European economic integration is covered extensively in several chapters, with particular attention and wealth of detail on monetary issues and the creation of the Euro, which, given Eichengreen's expertise in that field of research, is not surprising. Three chapters (8–9, 11) explain the crises which developed since the l960s in the post-World War II European economic model based on state-directed growth. The last three chapters detail adjustments to the new post-industrial, globalized economy and discuss current problems in achieving such adjustments. Finally, there are suggestions for possible future solutions or developments. |
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This book would indeed be very useful to any teacher preparing a course on the history of the European economy since 1945 or in the entire twentieth century. But the information here is extensive and possibly exhaustive for the purpose of undergraduate teaching. It would work best for a teacher who chooses a chronological approach, but less well for a teacher who chooses either a country-by-country or other thematic approach. In the latter case, a book such as Nicholas Crafts and Gianni Toniolo, eds., Economic Growth in Europe Since 1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), in which there are both chapters providing a general overview of postwar economic growth—one of them by Eichengreen himself—and several country-based chapters, would work better. Most undergraduate students would probably find that this study is too dense and full of detail. Although in dealing with European monetary problems, one can find some repetition when moving from chapter to chapter, this makes it easier to assign the reading of only certain chapters, and might be what Eichengreen intended. Still, this approach makes it more difficult to assign the entire book to most undergraduates. This difficulty has more to do with the widespread undergraduate's lack of familiarity with economic history than with Eichengreen's writing, which is very clear, generally jargon-free, and uncluttered by equations. These qualities are a welcome rarity in economic history. At the graduate level, the book would fit very well in the reading list of any seminar on twentieth-century economic and social history. Various points made by Eichengreen throughout the study are presented in conjunction with differing interpretations which are thus made available to the reader for consideration and further reading despite the fact that Eichengreen may ultimately disagree with them. This inclusion of differing ideas is a useful way of presenting the material and results from an ongoing debate among economic historians. It makes the book doubly useful for graduate students. Overall, the lasting impression the book leaves is a very positive one: it is clearly written, with a convincing overall argument and much detailed information that can be used by teachers, graduate students, and above average undergraduates. |
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| University of Mississippi |
Chiarella Esposito |
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