Taking the Long View: Rostow on Prospects for the World Economy

Abstract

Professor Rostow's latest book, Getting from Here to There, is ambitious and optimistic.' It is also readable and challenging. Unfortunately, it is not entirely successful. It is ambitious because Rostow tries to do what no one else has done-to place in long historical perspective the international economic crises of the last decade, to project the implication of these crises to the end of the century, and to propose policies to deal with those implications. It is optimistic because Rostow argues that the crises reflect cyclical rather than secular tendencies and that there are ways to mitigate their medium-term consequences. Getting from Here to There is not entirely successful because Rostow's diagnosis is not completely persuasive, because his remedies are not articulated in enough detail for the reader to decide whether they are adequate, and because he pays too little attention to the lessons taught by recent attempts at economic reform, domestic and international. The economic crises with which he is concerned-starting with the Indian crop failures of 1965-67 and including the worldwide inflation of 1972-73, the oil embargo and price increase of 1973-74, the deep international recession of 1974-75, and the slow recovery of 1976-77-have been given many interpretations. Some say these events represent the onset of the Malthusian crisis-the first tentative bumps of the ultimate collision between limitless human appetites