Paul W. Rhode is the Zachary Taylor Smith Professor at the Economics Department of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Gianni Toniolo is Professor of Economic History at the University of Rome 'Tor Vergata' and Research Professor of Economics at Duke University.

• 1. Understanding the 1990s: the long-run perspective Paul Rhode and Gianni Toniolo; 2. The world economy in the 1990s: a long-run perspective Nicholas Crafts; 3. Managing the world economy in the 1990s Barry Eichengreen; 4. Europe: a continent in decline? Riccardo Faini; 5. Technical change and US economic growth: the interwar period and the 1990s Alexander J. Field; 6. GPTs: then and now Peter L. Rousseau; 7. Productivity growth and the American labor market: the 1990s in historical perspective Gavin Wright; 8. The 1920s and the 1990s in mutual reflection Robert J. Gordon; 9. Bubbles and bursts: the 1990s in the mirror of the 1920s Eugene N. White; 10. The 1990s as a postwar decade Peter Temin; 11. What is happening to the Welfare State? Peter H. Lindert; 12. The American economic policy environment of the 1990s: origins, consequences, and legacies Michael A. Bernstein; Bibliography.

'… an excellent collection of essays by an excellent group of economists and economic historians. Focusing attention on the U.S. economy in the 1990s, with comparisons with other countries and other periods, it provides an important economic history of the twentieth century as well as an interesting starting point for the study of the twenty-first century.' Stanley L. Engerman, Professor of Economics and History, University of Rochester