This paper places Anglo-German growth after World War II in a long-term comparative perspective. Reviewing explanations of why post-war Germany is more dynamic than Britain, we evaluate arguments stressing institutional change, catching-up, and country-specific long-term experience. Examining...

The Great Depression in Germany led to the radicalization of the electorate, leading the country and then the world into the darkest days of Western Civilization. Could it have been otherwise? This paper explores whether the NSDAP takeover might have been averted with a fiscal policy that...

We evaluate explanations for why Germany grew so quickly in the 1950s. The recent literature has emphasized convergence, structural change and institutional shake-up while minimizing the importance of the postwar shock. We show that this shock and its consequences were more important than...

When did Germany become economically integrated? Within the framework of a gravity model, based on a new data set of about 40,000 observations on trade flows within and across the borders of Germany over the period 1885-1933, I explore the geography of trade costs across Central Europe. There...

Economic and social scientists are increasingly interested in historical data, but many relevant sources are still available in analog form, limiting accessibility and research potential. This article introduces the WBdigital database, which aims to improve this situation. The database provides...

Economic and social scientists are increasingly interested in historical data, but many relevant sources are still available in analog form, limiting accessibility and research potential. This article introduces the WBdigital database, which aims to improve this situation. The database provides...

This paper will put forward a number of economic considerations raised by the Russia-Ukraine conflict with the external strong participation, on the side of the latter, of the United States and its NATO allies. We begin with some observations regarding the United States, followed by the...

A regime shift towards increased inflation expectations is credited with jumpstarting the recovery from the Great Depression in the United States. Germany experienced a recovery as fast and strong in the 1930s. What role did inflation expectations play at the start of this remarkable economic...

May 2022 marked the 90th anniversary of the end of Heinrich Brüning's term as Reich Chancellor. To this day, the economic effects of Brüning's extreme austerity measures remain unclear. However, new data and calculations have made an initial quantification of the economic consequences of...

Im Mai 2022 hat sich das Ende von Reichskanzler Heinrich Brünings Amtszeit zum 90. Mal gejährt. Bis heute sind die ökonomischen Auswirkungen von Brünings extremer Austeritätspolitik noch immer ungeklärt. Neue Daten und Berechnungen erlauben erstmals die Quantifizierung der ökonomischen...