Book Reviews

This article will investigate why German business leaders during the 1950s resisted the American lead for advanced management training but instead developed theirvery own model, the Baden-Badener Unternehmergespräche (BBUG). The article explains the origins, set-up and methods of the BBUG; it also analyses the background of the talks' participants during its first decade of existence. In so doing, it provides another viewpoint to the debate on the ‘Americanisation’ of German management in the post-war years.     

The ‘Americanisation’ of West German economics after the Second World War: Success,failure, or something completely different?

Abstract

The paper examines the intellectual and structural change that German economics experienced after the Second World War. This development often was described as ‘Americanisation’, since it seemed to rest upon the influences of the American occupation regime. In contrast, the paper applies another meaning of ‘Americanisation’. It is considered a ‘discourse’ that serves to structure the disciplinary procedures to produce progress. As it can be shown by the adoption of Keynesianism and neoclassical microeconomics, the change of the discipline was not primarily driven by direct American influences. Rather, in some respect the German reception took a path of its own. That contradiction can be solved by a theoretical modification of the classical concept of ‘Americanisation’. ‘Americanisation’ there meant a change of the operational procedure of German economics to generate progress.     

Australian economics in the twentieth century

In this, the eightieth year of the formalisation of the Australianeconomics profession, a survey of it seems appropriate. Whilethe profession's beginnings were marked by an idiosyncratic,heterodox tradition, the paper finds that those attributes haveby now been largely dissolved by internationalisation. To demonstratethis, two periods in Australian economic history, and the roleof economic opinion within each, are examined. One concernsthe mobilisation of native economics expertise in developingpolicies to deal with the Great Depression, while the latterepisode covers the rise of neo-liberal policy or economic rationalismin Australia. Unlike the interwar period and the post-war era,contemporary Australian economics, despite its policy successin reforming the economy has problems in attracting young mindsto its fold.     

The transatlantic business community faced with US direct investment in Western Europe, 1958–1968

This article examines the position of US and European business in the debate about American direct investment in Western Europe in a historical perspective, from the establishment of the Common Market to the introduction of US regulation of foreign direct investment (FDI) a decade later. Based on abundant and diverse archival documents, it sheds new light on the process of Americanisation and contributes to existing research on transnational networks, by revealing the active role industrial leaders on both sides of the Atlantic played in shaping the political responses to problems raised by the American firms’ massive presence in the Common Market.