Economists at War: How World War II Changed Economics (and Vice Versa). 2024. Edited by Ariane Dupont-Kieffer, Robert W. Dimand, and Sylvie Rivot. Supplement to volume 56 of HOPE. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
"Introduction to Economists at War: How World War II Changed Economics (and Vice Versa)," by Ariane Dupont-Kieffer, Robert W. Dimand, and Sylvie Rivot (pp. 1-27). Economists from occupied countries and dictatorships migrated to the United States and Britain and were mobilized as experts in the preparation and conduct of the war, as well as in the construction of a postwar world centered on the bipolarization between the United States and the USSR.
"German-Speaking Émigré Economists in Great Britain and the Analysis of the German War Economy," by Harald Hagemann (pp. 29-52). After the defeat of France and the battle of Dunkirk, Britain relied on émigré economists such as Hans Singer, Hal C. Hillmann, and Paul Rosenstein-Rodan for urgent analyses of the German war economy.
"Economic Responses to Nazi Aggression in Europe: Albert Hirschman and Paul Rosenstein-Rodan on the Economic Sovereignty of Central and Eastern Europe," by Michele Alacevich (pp. 53-77). Hirschman and Rosenstein-Rodan offered important insights to the discussion of the European economic roots of World War II and immediate postwar national and international policies.
"Japanese Wartime Economics and Economists," by Alan Bollard (pp. 79-106). The varied and vibrant intellectual environment of prewar Japan--with its Marxists, neoclassical economists, and everyone in between--became, in the 1930s, dominated by "reform bureaucrats," technical planners with legal and military backgrounds who sought to deliver confiscated resources to the militarized Japanese economy.
"Koopmans, Dantzig, and the Wartime Origins of Activity Analysis," by Robert W. Dimand (pp. 107-32). The practical wartime needs of the armed forces and of a wartime economy created a vast demand for quantitative modeling and optimization in forms that later would be considered characteristic of economics but that were then undertaken by people from a variety of backgrounds with more mathematical training than most economists then possessed.
"The Political Economy of Lauchlin Currie's Land Tax Policy in Wartime China," by Hsiang-Ke Chao and Hsiao-ting Lin (pp. 133-54). Currie drew upon the New Deal as an analogy to underscore the importance of strong leadership and the interdependence of--and, in China, the need for--political and economic reforms.
"World War II and Socialist Integration: In Search of the Theoretical Foundations for Building the Socialist Bloc (1940-64)," by Nikolay Nenovsky and Tsvetelina Marinova (pp. 155-81). The project of integrating the socialist economies after the war is traced through (1) the contributions of Bert Hoselitz and Jacob Viner, (2) the creation of Comecon in 1949, Stalin's two-systems approach, and Yugoslav economists, and (3) the creation of the ruble zone and its later adjustment to the world market.
"World War II and Industrialization Policies in Latin America: The Cases of Argentina and Brazil," by Adriana Calcagno and Pedro Garcia Duarte (pp. 183-206). Like many Latin American countries in the immediate postwar period, Argentina and Brazil, led by the economists Raúl Prebisch and Celso Furtado, sought to quickly build their industrial sectors, culminating in the formation of the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America.
"Analysis without Theory: How the Statistical Research Group Shaped Milton Friedman's Economic Methodology," by Marcel Boumans (pp. 207-33). Milton Friedman's wartime experiences with research conducted at the Statistical Research Group, which focused on the statistical analysis of military problems, creating sequential analysis in the process, significantly shaped the methodology he outlined in his famous 1953 essay.
"Economic Expertise at War: A Brief History of the Institutionalization of French Economic Expertise (1936-46)," by Katia Caldari and Muriel Dal Pont Legrand (pp. 235-58). A series of global economic crises and the rise of economics as an autonomous discipline led, by the end of World War II, to the institutionalization of economic expertise in France and the creation of economic institutes, an economics language, and specific economics tools.
"Wartime Economics in Italy: National Accounting and Economic Planning," by Antonella Rancan (pp. 259-82). The development and standardization of national accounting in Italy was heavily influenced by World War II and the need to solve practical problems such as estimating war damages and allocating and evaluating the impact of reconstruction funds.
"Charles Bettelheim and World War II, or The Making of a Planning Doctor," by François Allisson (pp. 283-304). World War II played an important role, both institutionally and intellectually, in the path by which Bettelheim became a so-called planning doctor, providing him with new material to observe such as the German war economy and the Soviet planning efforts at the start of the war.