Conversations on Growth, Stability and Trade

An Historical Perspective

Brian Snowdon, Senior Teaching Fellow, Department of Economics and Finance, Durham University, UK

This unique volume provides a comprehensive survey of the major economic issues that have helped shape the modern world. It includes discussions of the latest research findings in macroeconomics and scrutinises some of the most important debates in economic history. The author examines the many controversies relating to the role of government in a modern economy, long-run growth and development, the spread of the Industrial Revolution, the causes and consequences of the ‘Great Depression’, the ‘Great Peacetime Inflation’, the conduct of stabilisation policy, international economic integration and globalisation.

‘This is a splendid book. It sits at the interface of economics and economic history, and provides both a textbook-style introduction to the key themes of macroeconomics and personal insights into the central debates gleaned from interviews with leading economists.’
– David Greasley, Australian Economic History Review

‘It should be in every library. A hundred years from now, it will be an important guide to what leading economists thought they knew, and what they knew they didn't know as of A.D. 2002.’
– Christopher Hanes, EH.Net

‘Conversations on Growth, Stability and Trade is a wonderful survey of the development of macroeconomic thinking over the past decades. Brian Snowdon has a knack for combining insightful essays on a subject with interviews of interesting, relevant, and diverse economists. The interviews give one an excellent sense of how economists approach policy issues.’
– David Colander, Middlebury College, US

‘Conversations on Growth, Stability and Trade has all the lucidity of A Modern Guide to Macroeconomics by Snowdon, Vane and Wynarczyk, combined with the fascination of Conversations with Leading Economists by Snowdon and Vane. Students will love it and their teachers will devour it the night before the big lecture. If only I had learned macroeconomics this way.’
– The late Mark Blaug, formerly of the University of London and University of Buckingham, UK

‘These well informed and highly readable interviews provide a great introduction to some of the big issues in modern economics.’
– Roger E. Backhouse, University of Birmingham, UK