With this theme in mind, namely that rapid growth requires available extra labor at little if any extra real cost, Kindleberger examines the postwar record, to 1964 approximately, of 1) fast growing developed economies with expanding labor supply, namely Germany, Italy, Switzerland, and the Netherlands; 2) fast growers with limited labor, Austria and France; 3) slow growers with limited supplies of labor, Scandinavia, Belgium, and the United Kingdom; 4) undeveloped countries of emigration, Portugal, Spain, Greece, and Turkey. What he has to say about these economies is invariably interesting, and he pieces a great deal of varied facts together in a skillful and usually persuasive way… Europe’s Postwar Growth, with its special reference to differences in extra labor supply from country to country, rewards careful reading. It is brimful of selected data… Kindleberger offers throughout an honest balancing of arguments and a modest skepticism, uncommon virtues among many economic development writers.
-- American Economic Review