The Marshall Plan: Economic Effects and Implications for Eastern Europe and the Former USSR

This paper is a first attempt to evaluate the economic effects of the Marshall Plan. We find that US aid had a significant impact on Europe's recovery from World War II. The recipients of large amounts of Marshall aid recovered significantly faster than other industrial countries. Strikingly, however, we find that the obvious channels through which the Marshall Plan could have affected European recovery - stimulating investment, augmenting capacity to import and financing infrastructure repair - were relatively unimportant. Rather, the crucial role of the Marshall Plan was to facilitate the restoration of financial stability and the liberalization of production and prices.