From the perspective of the 1990s, the 1960s seem to have been a golden age for economics. National income was growing even faster than in the 1950s, unemployment remained at about 2% of the labor force, and inflation was at 4% for most of the decade. The long boom that had begun at the end of World War II and was to continue until the oil crisis of 1973 was at its peak. Economic success was the backdrop to a number of economic and social experiments, including the founding of many new universities in the United Kingdom and the first attempts to join the European Community.
In this study, a uniquely qualified team of economists and policy-makers examine the economic experience of the 1960s. They examine the conditions which enabled the boom to last for such a long time, and the factors which finally brought it to an end. The decade of the 1960s was rich in policy experiments--many that tried to curb inflation, and others that aimed to increase productivity. In retrospect, neither strategy proved to be successful, and the late sixties were marked by the rising inflation and falling productivity that were to persist throughout the seventies. The economic problems that emerged are still on the agenda, and this book concludes by assessing the extent to which policy mistakes of the sixties were responsible for these conflicts.

The 1960s were a turning point for postwar economic policy. They were the high point of along boom that ran from the end of the Second World War to the oil crisis in 1973. But they also saw the beginning of persistent and high levels of unemployment and inflation that have plagued the economy ever since. In this book, politicians, senior officials and well-known economists from several countries, including James Callaghan, Roy Jenkin, Robert Solow and Charles Kindleberger, discuss economic and social policy in the 1960s and its consequences.