12 - The Influence of the United States on German Economic Thought

Summary

the americanization of economics

The growth of economics as an academic discipline following World War II was marked by an increasing internationalization that was simultaneously in large part a process of Americanization. Richard Portes has even asked “whether there is now any economics outside and independent of the United States. All the data confirm American leadership.” Although one could still speak of an Anglo-American leadership position for the period up to the end of the 1960s because of the enormous influence of John Maynard Keynes, post-Keynesian economists such as Roy Harrod and Nicolas Kaldor, as well as other English economists such as Sir John Hicks, James Meade, and Richard Stone, the influence of British economists has since shrunk to such an extent that America's leadership in economics is now beyond debate. The Nobel Prize for Economics, which has existed since 1969, has been awarded to American economists in twenty-eight out of forty-two cases. Recently, this has raised questions about the independence of European economic thought as well as about the similarities and differences between American and European economics.