ABSTRACT
The 1970s was a turbulent decade for the world economy in general and for OECD countries in particular, with more inflation and less economic growth than in the 1950s and 1960s. Although commentators are always quick to speak of economic crises there was fairly broad agreement in the late 1960s that the world economy was set for sustained and stable economic growth over the decades ahead. The cause for this optimism lay in numerous related factors. First and foremost, perhaps, was the experience of two decades of unprecedented economic growth (see Table 1.3) which to varying degrees had been shared by all the industrialised countries. At the same time unemployment had remained persistently low, apart from minor cyclical fluctuations. World trade — which had been destroyed by interwar protectionism and the economic disruption of the Second World War — had recovered and was growing at a historically high rate.
