ABSTRACT
The USA and Britain were the slowest growers, but the USA was the world’s most efficient economy, at the ‘technological frontier’. Britain was well within that technological frontier and had much to gain from adopting or adapting US methods. Government policy of giving priority to exporters and producers of investment goods speeded recovery. Having negotiated the ‘transition’ successfully, the British economy shared, in its own limited way, in the forces which made for faster world growth. British industry ought to have been able to adjust to volatile demand growth. Japanese demand was as unstable as that of the UK and German car makers were more highly exposed to unpredictable export markets than British firms without unfavourable effects on investment or output growth. Little heed was paid to the working of the social security system before the mid-1950s because governments were confident that full employment, the welfare state and rising numbers of married women in employment had banished poverty.
