Germany and Britain before World War 1

John Maynard Keynes was a British economist that lived from 1883 to 1946 and was the initiator of a new vision of macroeconomics, which has profoundly influenced the economic policy framework of several countries during the last decades. He worked as Treasury adviser to the British government during the negotiations that took place in 1919 in France over the fate of Germany and the reshaping of the European post-World War I order. Profoundly dissatisfied with the form taken by the negotiations and their outcome, Keynes had decided to resign from the British delegation on May 26, 1919 and to retire in Cambridge to write for a period of two months the very influential The Economic Consequences of the Peace in 1919. Through his book, Keynes details the elements composing Versailles Treaty and analyses the impact it may have on the whole European economic and political order. Keynes also includes propositions in his work and thus proposes an alternative path to the one taken by the Council of the Four . The publication has had important influence on the discussions following the negotiations on the reshaping of the political order of Europe and of the institutional framework which was to be put into place to guarantee peace. Thus, to what extent can we say that this influential publication affected the economic and political affairs following World War I and what lessons could be made from it? First of all, we will center our analysis on one of the main argument of Keynes, which is the fact that the strength of political interests hindered the existence of a constructive debate on the fate of the European economic and political order. Afterwards, we will explore how efficient was Keynes’ analysis in predicting the instability of the order established by the so-called ‘Versailles system’.

The Economics of World War I, 2005

Bulletin of Economic Research, 1965

THE ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES OF PEACE: AN ANALYSIS, 2020

This paper reconstructs the harsh economic conditions of post World War One Germany. As the world leaders gathered to inflict the Versailles "Peace" upon Germany, in his book 'The Economic Consequences of Peace', Keynes highlights all the harsh clauses, which would become the means and methods of the economic crippling of not only Germany, but the entirety of Europe. This paper sums up all his hypotheses, his predictions, his warnings and his alternate recommendations, along with various other example from the time period, all in a easy and condensed form for the ease of the reader.

Cambridge University Press

Cambridge University Press eBooks, 2004

This clear and accessible textbook addresses key issues in twentieth-century British economic history. It is a highly worthy successor to volume 3 of The Economic History of Britain Since 1700, 2nd ed. (1994), edited by Roderick Floud and Donald McCloskey, and improves upon it in certain respects. Notable strengths of the new volume include its expanded treatment of services and its incorporation of a wider range of theoretical perspectives. There are especially useful chapters on the financial services sector since 1945 (Katherine Watson), the welfare state, income, and living standards (Paul Johnson), and on regional development and policy (Peter Scott). Valuable contributions are also made in each of the other chapters, which include the wartime economy, 1939-1945 (Peter Howlett), British economic growth since 1949 (Michael Kitson), manufacturing performance (Stephen Broadberry), state ownership of industry (Leslie Hannah), employment, education, and human capital (Mary O'Mahony), money and monetary policy since 1945 (Susan Howson), economic policy (Jim Tomlinson), the rise of the service economy (Robert Millward), the impact of Europe (Larry Neal), technology in postwar Britain (Nick von Tunzelmann), British fiscal policy since 1939 (Tom Clark and Andrew Dilnot), and industrial relations (William Brown). Examples of the volume's wider theoretical scope can be found in several chapters. Kitson explicitly discusses alternative approaches to conceptualizing economic growth. Other authors portray economic behavior and outcomes that do not fit neatly with neoclassical models (for example, "the apparently irrational behaviour" of giltedged investors, mentioned by Howson on p. 159, and the inability of market adjustment processes to remove regional disparities, underscored by Scott). Setting a wider context for Watson's chapter on financial services, Millward addresses the expansion of labor-intensive consumer services, the rise of producer services, and the unanticipated surge in service exports. Financial and business services were the biggest net earners by the 1990s. After describing measurement problems in some detail, he compares British performance in services with that in the United States, France, and Germany. Brown's chapter on industrial relations provides a concise and stimulating overview. While he suggests (p. 404) that "it may be trite to say that employers get the trade unions they deserve," he argues that it was employers' "lack of solidarity that led to the break-up of industry-level bargaining, and their inadequate controls that encouraged unprecedented workplace bargaining in the 1960s and 1970s." The 1980s and 1990s saw collective bargaining in retreat. Brown discusses a range of possible consequences, positive and negative, including the sharp increase in income inequality in Britain at the end of the twentieth century, which he attributes in part to the weakening of trade unions. Two omissions can be noted. O'Mahony's chapter focuses on human capital, education, and training. The volume also might have included a chapter on immigration and its implications for labor markets, entrepreneurship, and economic policy in postwar Britain. More treatment of the loss of empire might also have been warranted. Although decolonization appears in some chapters, the editors have chosen to highlight instead Britain's changing relationship with the European continent. That relationship

2008

During the past two decades, Robert Allen's researches into English agriculture have fundamentally reshaped our understanding of the nature and pace of rising agricultural productivity between the late middle ages and the 19th century. More recently, Allen has turned his attention to the study of real wages as a measure of economic development and begun investigating the progress of wages in other parts of the globe. These different strands have come together in this book, the British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective. The book is neatly divided into two parts, the first looking at the British economy prior to industrialisation, and the second looking at the industrial revolution itself. Whilst parts of the book recapitulate research previously published, there is much that is new and Allen presents us with a clear yet many-layered argument about the nature and causes of the industrial revolution, and about why it occurred in Britain, as opposed to anywhere else, when it did. These of course are questions that have already received substantial attention, yet there can be no doubting that this book makes an important contribution to the existing literature. Though by training an economic historian, Allen manages to present complex economic analysis in a clear and intelligible style, and the book largely succeeds in the series' remit of writing guides accessible to undergraduates. This is more than a student textbook, however. The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective provides a novel interpretation of the industrial revolution that will be important to experts in the field. So without further hesitation let us start to unpack Allen's account of the world's first industrial revolution.