Open AccessEconomics and Economic Policy in Britain, 1946-1966 by T. W. Hutchison. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1968.
Author(s) -
E. A. G. Robinson
Publication year - 1969
Publication title -
pakistan development review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.154
H-Index - 26
ISSN - 0030-9729
DOI - 10.30541/v9i1pp.87-89
Subject(s) - george (robot) , nothing , inflation (cosmology) , devaluation , value (mathematics) , economics , economic history , spanish civil war , keynesian economics , political science , law , history , philosophy , monetary economics , exchange rate , art history , physics , epistemology , machine learning , theoretical physics , computer science
Professor Hutchison is a very distinguished historian ofeconomic thought who has hitherto written little or nothing in the fieldof economic policy-making. In this book he is concerned not so much witheconomic policy as with econo¬mists as advisers on economic policy. Hismethod is the method of the historian of economic thought. He looks atdifferent economists recommending and criticising policies, looks at theoutcomes of policies and sizes up the value of the advice. As one ofthose whom among many others he has chosen to dissect in this way, Ihave no ground for complaint. My fellow specimens differ in differentperiods. Those who most frequently appear on his paper include Harrod,Balogh, Robertson, Hicks, Joan Robinson, Kahn, Johnson, Warswick, Dow,Kaldor, Day, Paish. He looks at what was written during various periodsand in relation to the issues of those periods: the early post-War phaseof adjust¬ment to the post-War world and the devaluation of 1949; thepost-Korean ex¬pansion and the new monetary policy of 1951-55; thedevelopment of growth consciousness and of persistent inflation during1955-60; the continuing pro¬blems of growth and those of entry into thecommon market during 1960-66, where his story ends. It is fascinative,particularly for the victims, to look again in hind-sight and see whereone was reasonably right and where one was obviously wrong.