New Zealand economic policy between World War II and Rogernomics has often been criticised as insulated, inefficient, and inimical to growth—assessments that are challenged in Judgements of all Kinds. This study explains New Zealand policymaking within its historical context, beginning with how it was one of the smallest independent states in 1945 as well as one of the most dependent on external trade, and thus one of the least in control of its economic fate.

The Depression and the war provoked the development of a historically distinctive policy regime, committed to full employment and economic development, and the maintenance of the postwar regime is one of the broad themes discussed in the book, as is the profound transformation of New Zealand’s small settler economy.

Based on extensive research in official archives, it offers a perspective on the perceptions, ideas, competing interests, and external context that shaped the views and actions of the ministers and officials involved in managing, and developing, a small dependent economy.