ABSTRACT

Economic Growth during the W ar Wartime disruption both to geographical boundaries and to the price mech­ anism makes it difficult to give a precise account of the growth of the national economies during the Second World War, particularly in 1944 and 1945 when a lot of economic activity in continental Europe probably moved into the un­ recorded informal sector. However, Angus Maddison has estimated a consistent set of real data covering our economies for this period and these are shown in Table 2.1.1 Not surprisingly, those economies which experienced land fighting ended the war with levels of real GDP below their pre-war level, whereas the war enhanced the levels of real GDP of those economies that avoided land fighting (the UK and the neutral economies).