ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the forces underlying the emergence of ‘declinism’ in 1950s and early 1960s. The Second World War inaugurated a major extension of government responsibility for economic life. The historical development of national income statistics has engaged more scholarly attention than any other area of economic statistics. Theoretical work on national income on a standardised basis had quickly been initiated after the war, and led to a major report from a committee chaired by Richard Stone in 1947. Statistics on industrial production on an official basis pre-dated those for national income. The League of Nations’ efforts of the 1930s had failed to produce the comparative national income and industrial production data envisaged at the end of the 1920s. The declining share of world trade was taken up quite widely by officials, academics and ministers because of the contemporary concern with the balance of payments.
