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GLOBAL FINANCE
» Friedman, M. & Schwartz, A.J. (1963) A Monetary History of
the United States, 18671960
. Princeton University Press (for the
National Bureau of Economic Research), Princeton.
INTERNATIONAL TRADE
Mercantilism
Controversial when it was first published in 1931 because of fears of
fascism, this book proposes that the success of the West over the last
500 years has been in large part due to mercantilism, a way of organizing
labor, business, and government to work for national prosperity by
promoting overseas trade. Pure laissez-faire is impossible, it suggests.
Overseas trade was the most effective way of generating taxable
revenues, increasing the strength of the state and thereby benefiting
the whole country, and from the 1500s to the 1700s, mercantilist
policies helped to build wealthy nation states out of chaotic feudalism.
In the nineteenth century, powerful European nations continued to
follow mercantilist policies, dominating the rest of the world both
economically and politically.
The twentieth century rise of competing ideologies that give greater
weight to labor (socialism, communism) or business (capitalism) than
to government made this book seem irrelevant, although much of
its historical analysis was generally accepted by critics. Today's glob-
alization process has brought a changing and uncertain relationship
between the three economic elements (labor, business, and govern-
ment) and has revived interest in the book as people look for new ways
of organizing countries to create prosperity.
» Heckscher, E.F. (1931) Mercantilism. George Allen and Unwin,
London. Revised, second edition, edited by Ernst F. S¨
oderlund,
1955, 2 volumes. (Originally published as Merkantilisment: Ett led
i den ekonomiska politikens historia
. P.A. Norstedt and S¨
oner,
Stockholm.)
TECHNOLOGY AND GROWTH
The Unbound Prometheus: Technological Change and
Industrial Development in Western Europe from
1750 to the Present
This classic work sheds much light on the newness or otherwise of
the New Economy debate. The author, David Landes, believes that the
