Patrick O’Brien has written extensively on the background to the British Industrial Revolution, in particular the role of the state, see for example O’Brien, Patrick, ‘Inseparable connexions: trade, economy, fiscal state and the expansion of empire, 1688–1815’, in Marshall, P. J (ed.), The Oxford History of the British Empire, Vol. 2, The Eighteenth Century (Oxford University Press, 1998), 53–77. For a critical summary of his work see Vries, P., ‘Patrick O’Brien on industrialization, little Britain and the wider world’, Journal of Global History 17(1) (2022), 151–58. For a positive review of mercantilist industrial policy see Reinert, Erik ‘The role of the state in economic growth’, Journal of Economic Studies 26(4/5) (1999), 268–326. Juhasz, Reka and Steinwender, Claudia ‘Industrial policy and the great divergence’, Annual Review of Economics 16 (2024), 27–54 is a recent review of the evidence on industrial policy and growth in the long nineteenth century.

Lindert, P. H. has written a comprehensive two-volume study of the emergence of social spending and the welfare state in Growing Public: Social Spending and Economic Growth since the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge University Press, 2004).

Eichengreen, Barry has surveyed the political economy and economic development in Europe in the second half of the twentieth century: The European Economy since 1945: Coordinated Capitalism and Beyond (Princeton University Press, 2007).

The interwar period is covered in a masterly work by Feinstein, C. H., Temin, P. and Toniolo, G., The European Economy between the Wars (Oxford University Press, 1997).

To get an idea of the optimistic mood regarding the accomplishments and possibilities of Keynesian demand management just before the eruption of the new classical critique, read Heller, Walter et al., Fiscal Policy for a Balanced Economy: Experience, Problems and Prospects (OECD, 1968).

Crafts, N. F. R. and Toniolo, G. have edited a volume of country-specific studies in Economic Growth in Europe since 1945 (Cambridge University Press, 1996).

Perotti, Roberto, ‘The “austerity myth”: gain without pain?’, in Alesina, A. and Giavazzi, F. (eds), Fiscal Policy after the Financial Crisis (University of Chicago Press, 2013), 307–54, discusses the problems of austerity policies.

On voting reactions to austerity see Fetzer, T., ‘Did austerity cause Brexit?’, American Economic Review 109(11) (2019), 3849–86 and Hübscher, E., Sattler, T. and Wagner, M., ‘Voter responses to fiscal austerity’, British Journal of Political Science 51(4) (2021), 1751–60. Galofré-Vilà, G., Meissner, C. M., McKee, M. and Stuckler, D., ‘Austerity and the rise of the Nazi Party’, Journal of Economic History 81(1) (2021), 81–113, is another contribution on the political consequences of interwar austerity.