 The result was that Belgian heavy industry faced an "acute structural crisis" in the 1950s as Belgian industrial exports became uncompetitive.This led to the start of the deindustrialisation of Wallonia and the start of regional economic divergence between Wallonia and Flanders which would become visible during the general strike of winter 1960–61.The study of the period was important in the formation of the economic thought of the economist Alexandre Lamfalussy, who wrote on the subject in the early 1960s.