ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the empirical foundations of the Transition Theory over the period 1950–80. Chapter 6 will apply the Transition Theory to the relationship between Britain, as the archetypal industrialised country, and the latter-day NICs of the US, Germany, Russia, etc., over the period 1850–1913. For the moment, however, we are concerned with the empirical relationship between LDC industrialisation and economic recession in the OECD as a whole in the light of the Transition Theory. It is argued that the facts broadly fit the deductions of the theory in every respect. The surge in LDC industrialisation that began in the mid-1960s triggered a sequence of global economic adjustments in the following fifteen years that has underpinned the protracted recession in the bloc of industrialised countries.
