In this new book, Nicholas Crafts (Director of CAGE) develops a new interpretation of the growth performance of the British economy over the long run. The focal point is to understand how the world leader of the early 19th century became an also ran in the recent past. The explanation is based on the role of institutional legacies interacting with badly designed economic policy to undermine productivity growth after World War II. The underlying theme is that ‘history matters’ and that the seeds of relative economic decline during the 20th century were sown much earlier. The book is based on the author’s Macarthur Lectures delivered at the University of Cambridge.

Book is available to purchase at Cambridge University Press and Amazon.