PROSPERITY AND UPHEAVAL: THE WORLD ECONOMY 1945-1980 by Herman Van der Wee translated by Robin Hogg and Max R. Hall Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987. 621pp., $14.95 Van der Wee uncritically accepts that Keynesianism is responsible for post-war economic stability. Against this belief, it is argued that an analysis of the historical record shows no significant efforts at countercyclical fiscal management in the post-war era, while efforts to control the economy via monetary policy were associated with increasing instability, culminating in the crisis years of the 1970s. Thus, in the American case at least, post-war stability has been the result of self-correcting market tendencies, while instability has followed government macroeconomic intervention.
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