Product Description

This book is a comprehensive study of government reactions to the interwar unemployment problem. Drawing upon an extensive range of primary and secondary sources, it analyses official ameliorative policy towards unemployment and contemporary reactions to such intervention. In doing so, it highlights the struggle that emerged between conventional economic thinking and the calls made by radical economists, industrialists and politicians (including Keynes, Mosley and Lloyd George) for the state to play a more determinant role in economic recovery. There is detailed treatment of the nature and scale of interwar unemployment, regional policy and the complex history of unemployment assistance. In addition, careful study is made of the impact which unemployment had in influencing the conduct of public policy in related areas of economic concern, including industrial policy, overseas trade, colonial development, wage determination, labour supply and the content and purpose of monetary and fiscal policy.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2092950 in Books
• Published on: 2002-06-20
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 432 pages

Review
"Written from the perspective of a historian rather than a social scientist, its strengths lie in careful compilation of details from the archives and accurate summarization of the secondary literature, particularly that of the period." Journal of Interdisciplinary History

"...well-organized and clearly written....the best available comprehensive guide to the crucial problem of unemployment and public policy during the period....provide[s] us with a much better understanding of the unemployment problem between the wars and the revolution in economic thought and policy that it helped spawn." Gerard M. Koot, American Historical Review

"...this book is a delight and much needed....a first rate work...." Bentley Brinkerhoff Gilbert, Journal of Economic Literature