ABSTRACT
In common parlance, a variety of causes combined to make a European "miracle" understandable. After 1961 the American leadership, struck by the difference between their own growth rate and that of the Europeans, also decided on a voluntarist growth policy. In Europe, two countries, Great Britain and Italy, are apparently suffering from a more deep-seated disease which was not caused by the recession and which recovery will not cure. In Italy and France, there was a substantial shift of manpower from agriculture into industry and the tertiary industries, and from low-productivity into high-productivity jobs. The interests of France coincide partly with those of the other industrialized countries to the extent that all the partner-competitors gain by fair rules and a balance in the world economy. The development of the world economy is an histoire, not a regular process of evolution toward a predetermined catastrophic or paradisiac end.
