New Zealand in the World Economy 1938–56

Abstract

While sorting through some old papers recently, I came across a paper that I had completed, probably early in 1957, on ‘New Zealand in the World Economy 1938-56’. This had been intended to be a contribution to a book on ‘Contemporary New Zealand’, on which a group of us at Victoria University College were collaborating – Ken Scott, Kingston Braybrooke, Winston Monk and myself being the main contributors. Tragically, Winston was killed in an aircraft crash at Singapore early in 1954.

I became involved in assisting a Royal Commission in 1955. The other contributors also became involved with tasks of higher priority. Accordingly, the project was never completed, and my paper was never published. Economic historians to whom I showed the paper have encouraged me to publish it now, with a brief introduction and minor modifications to avoid misunderstandings about the timing of events. Thinking back to the period during which this piece was written, one of them recalled how little independent research and informed commentary on important domestic and external economic issues were going on in New Zealand at the time. The first of the Economic Surveys produced by the Treasury did not appear until 1951. The sections on the history of the financial system that Albert McGregor and I prepared for the report of the Monetary Commission, presented early in 1956, were a significant semi-official contribution.

The dearth of economic research in the mid-1950s was noted by the Commission. Thanks to the efforts of Professor Horace Belshaw and some farsighted business people and officials, the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research was established in 1958. The relative lack of informed independent comment on economic issues through the New Zealand media and academic community was reflected in the decision by the National Government to set up the Monetary and Economic Council in 1961 as an independent ‘economic watchdog’. Thus the following analysis, produced in the mid-1950s, is of some intrinsic interest for its scarcity value. My qualifications for writing it had been enhanced by my having been the lesser half of the Economic Division of the External Affairs Department, under Lloyd White, from 1949 until 1952.