W. W. Rostow

The Take-off into Self-sustained Growth

The purpose of this article is to explore the following hypothesis: that the process of economic growth can usefully be regarded as centring on a relatively brief time interval of two or three decades when the economy and the society of which it is a part transform themselves in such ways that economic growth is, subsequently, more or less automatic. This decisive transformation is here called the take-off.1

Kondratieff, Schumpeter, and Kuznets: Trend Periods Revisited

The analysis of fluctuations longer than the nine-year business cycle has been somewhat confused by a failure to distinguish sharply and to relate three distinct phenomena: the forces set in motion by a leading sector in growth, stemming from the introduction and progressive diffusion of a new technology, and its deceleration; the forces set in motion by changes in the profitability of producing foodstuffs and raw materials, whether from the side of prices or technology, including their effects on investment in new territories and mines, on capital movements, interest rates, terms of trade, and domestic and international income distribution; and the forces set in motion (notably, in housing and urban infrastructure) by large waves of international or domestic migration or other forces changing the rate of family formation, housing demand, and the size of the working force. As the world economy unfolded after 1783, these three phenomena operated concurrently and related to each other in complex ways not easy to disentangle. Nevertheless, the substantial literature on long waves can be usefully clarified by distinguishing these phenomena more sharply than is sometimes done and then relating them to each other at particular times and places. The exercise of doing so has, I believe, some general implications for economic theory, for they are all aspects of the process of adjustment towards a moving equilibrium, never attained—a process for which we lack an adequate dynamic theory.

The Interrelation of Theory and Economic History

I Do not much hold with ardent debate about method. A historian method is as individual—as private—a matter as a novelists style. There is good reason for reserve—even reticence—on this subject, except insofar as we seek to share each others unique professional adventures and to listen occasionally, in a mood of interest tempered with skepticism, to such general reflections as we each would draw from those adventures.

The Stages of Economic Growth. A Non-Communist Manifesto.

The stages of economic growth, a non-Communist manifesto , The stages of economic growth, a non-Communist manifesto , کتابخانه دیجیتال و فن آوری اطلاعات دانشگاه امام صادق(ع)

The Division of Europe after World War II: 1946.

Should the negotiation of the post-World War II peace treaties in Europe have been pursued separately or should they have been approached within the framework of a general European settlement? The debate on this fundamental foreign policy issue, which has left only faint tracks in the documentary record, is fully explored here for the first time. W. W. Rostow, in his second book in the Ideas and Action Series, describes a meeting that took place on the eve of the departure of Secretary of State James Byrnes for Paris to participate in treaty negotiations. The meeting was probably the only occasion during 1946 when the peace treaty issue as a whole was explicitly addressed at a high level with lucid alternatives on the table. The plan laid before Secretary of State Byrnes by his senior subordinates, Under Secretary Dean Acheson and Assistant Secretary for Economic Affairs Will Clayton, aimed to halt the movement toward the split of Europe and the emergence of hostile blocs. It outlined an all-European settlement, including economic and security institutions linked to the United Nations. Only one part of the proposal gained Byrness support and came to life: the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe in Geneva. But the Acheson-Clayton proposal foreshadowed the Marshall Plan. The books larger theme is the process by which the Cold War came about. Rostows interpretation differs from either conventional or revisionist views, emphasizing as it does the process of incremental deterioration that occurred in 1946 and the role of uncertainty and weakness in American policy. This second volume in the Ideas and Action Series will interest general readers as well as those with a particular interest in World War II. It should be of special value to political scientists, economists, military historians, and policy makers, and may serve as a case study in a variety of courses.