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

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.