The Global Economy in the Post-War Era

Abstract

Abstract In the three decades after 1945, the global economy was reconstructed. By the 1970s, trade integration had regained the level it had achieved in the late 19th century. The fundamental drivers of higher trade integration were, of course, lower trade costs. New technologies, higher incomes, and a new, multilateral approach to trade policy drove these declines. The global economy also witnessed a resurgence of economically motivated migration in the 1950s and 1960s. Western European nations were especially dependent on inflows of manufacturing workers. In the Americas, migration restrictions remained, although by the 1960s the United States and several other “new world” nations began to see modest increases in the numbers of foreign-born. Nevertheless, during the 1950s and 1960s, migration rates would never attain the levels they had prior to World War II in these former “receiving” nations.