Planning for Reconstruction: Insights from W.H. Hutt

Writing in the early 1940s, William H. Hutt’s Plan for Reconstruction offers a historical perspective of a perennial problem—how do nations recover after war? In his work, Hutt offers a detailed plan for post-World War II Britain. He suggests that, should his plan be adopted, Britain would not only benefit in the event of future wars, but would also see remarkable benefits in peacetime. We use Hutt’s work as a starting point to discuss the contemporary discourse surrounding post-war reconstruction. We discuss how economists interpreted Hutt’s work and highlight how some of the tensions present in Hutt’s plan remain in modern discussions of post-war reconstruction.

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