The Growth Record

BEFORE we examine the data in detail, it is first of all important to distinguish between the cyclical features of the economy and its longer-term growth performance. Economic theorists have for long wrestled with the complex problem of relating these two aspects to one another, and in historical terms the problem is probably insoluble. As Svennilson has pointed out (1954, 12–13) in his study of the European economy in the inter-war period, the economic historian can indicate the relationships between the two aspects of economic change but cannot integrate them into a general explanation.