ABSTRACT
The post-1945 development of economics in Germany is characterized by important similarities as well as by some marked specialities compared to the development of economics in other European countries. With the professionalization process widely advancing, the postwar era saw a remarkable growth in the number, scale and importance of economists and economic research institutions, particularly in the 1960s and 1970s. Professional economists came to play more significant roles as advisers to policy-makers, as members of the central bank’s directory or as politicians themselves. Internationalization for the greater part was related to Americanization, due to the increasing dominance of American economics after World War II.2 Thus German economics also saw the rise and fall of Keynesianism and the stronger influences of monetarist ideas since the 1970s. The move towards a ‘professional Gleichschaltung’, diagnosed by Peacock (1995) and characterized by a growing importance of mathematics, statistics and econometric techniques and the motivation to satisfy one’s peer group, certainly can be observed in Germany. As in most other countries the 1980s saw the development of a far greater preference of students for business studies. In the German system, where business administration and economics normally are taught in one faculty, the enormous growth of student numbers and the dominance of business studies had a negative impact on the demand for pure economic reasoning and fields like the history of economic thought and economic history.
