Wartime is not just about military success. Economists at War tells a different story - about a group of remarkable economists who used their skills to help their countries fight their battles during the Chinese-Japanese War, Second World War, and the Cold War.
1935-55 was a time of conflict, confrontation, and destruction. It was also a time when the skills of economists were called upon to finance the military, to identify economic vulnerabilities, and to help reconstruction. Economists at War: How a Handful of Economists Helped Win and Lose the World Wars focuses on the achievements of seven finance ministers, advisors, and central bankers from Japan, China, Germany, the UK, the USSR, and the US. It is a story of good and bad economic thinking, good and bad policy, and good and bad moral positions. The economists suffered threats, imprisonment, trial, and assassination. They all believed in the power of economics to make a difference, and their contributions had a significant impact on political outcomes and military ends.
Economists at War shows the history of this turbulent period through a unique lens. It details the tension between civilian resources and military requirements; the desperate attempts to control economies wracked with inflation, depression, political argument, and fighting; and the clever schemes used to evade sanctions, develop barter trade, and use economic espionage. Politicians and generals cannot win wars if they do not have the resources. This book tells the human stories behind the economics of wartime.
Author(s): Alan Bollard
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Year: 2020
Language: English
Pages: xxvi+321
Preface and Acknowledgements
Contents
List of Plates
Recent Books by Alan Bollard
The Economists’ Connections
Notes to the Diagram
1 Fall Down Seven Times Get Up Eight? Takahashi Korekiyo in Japan, 1934–5
How Takahashi Learned His Craft
1934: Saving Japan from Depression
1935: Disciplining Military Spending
2 Richest Man in the World? H. H. Kung in China, 1936–7
H. H. Kung and the First Family of China
1936: Collecting Revenue Chinese-Style
1937: Raising Foreign Aid
3 The Self-Proclaimed Economic Wizard Hjalmar Schacht in Germany, 1938–9
‘One of Germany’s Strong Men’
1938: Filling the Credit Shortage—MEFO Bills
1939: Trade Deals to Save Foreign Exchange
4 ‘No One in Our Age was Cleverer . . .’ Maynard Keynes in Britain, 1939–41
‘I Work for a Government I Deplore . . .’
1939–40: How to Pay for the War
1941: The International Clearing Union
5 The Calculating Iceman Leonid Kantorovich in the USSR, 1941–2
The Boy from Petrograd
1941: Solving Linear Programming
1942: The Best Use of Economic Resources
6 The Peacenik who Helped Bombing Tactics Wassily Leontief in the USA, 1943–4
That Other Boy from Petrograd
1943: Reports on the Russian Economy
1943–4: Input-Output Analysis and Bombing
7 ‘If They Say Bomb at One O’clock . . .’ John von Neumann in the USA, 1944–5
‘Johnny von Neumann and the Rest of Us’
1944–5: Bombing, Computing, and Modelling
1945: Game Theory and Confrontation
8 Economists at Armistice The Economists at War’s End, 1946
‘. . . Even if the A-Bomb Had Not Been Dropped’
1946: Peace in the East
1946: Peace in the West
9 Economists in the Cold War Money, Computers, and Models, 1946–55
Kung Making Hot Money
Von Neumann in the Cold War
Kantorovich at War and Peace
Leontief at Peace
10 Annex Economies in Wartime
Impact of the War on the Major Warring Economies
Wartime Economic Burdens
Summary of Wartime Policy Approaches
Bibliography
Index
