ABSTRACT
For a country in which international trade is significant the balance of payments is crucial for growth while its industries must also be competitive in home markets for goods which can be imported, or demand at home will be directed to foreign goods. After 1951-2 and 1955, the year 1960 brought the fourth highest growth rate of real gross national product, and marked the high-point of the third wave of growth in the German economy since 1950. The rapid transformation of Germany's balance-of-payments position in 1951 is probably the one point in the country's postwar economic experience which deserves the word miracle. The interpretation of economic development in France in the light of the theory of export-induced growth is not quite so straightforward as in the case of Germany. While France appears to have escaped the full rigours of the export-or-stagnate rule, Britain presents a fine case study of its operation, at the opposite pole from Germany.
