Most influential postwar German economists belonged to a dense neoliberal network.

Evidence

Beside these concrete examples of the impact of the infrastructures of German neoliberalism on the history of economic politics in Germany, the chapter provided personal and institutional network analyses of a sample of 800 post-World War II German economics professors. The main conclusion drawn from these analyses is that, among the group of economists with a high media presence or important positions in policy advice, or even in economic organizations such as the Bundesbank or governmental authorities, a majority can be assigned to the German neoliberal thought collective. In contrast, only a small minority of “influential” economists is connected to the Keynesian-Alternative thought collective. Therefore one can conclude that a densely connected infrastructure of German neoliberalism, organized around neoliberal economists, think tanks, policy advice institutions, and economic research institutes, has over many decades exercised a formative influence on German economic policies. — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 655

On the one hand in the bottom and center there is a group of fifteen out of twenty-eight economists (54 percent), connected in a dense network of German neoliberal think tanks and institutions and thus part of a German neoliberal thought collective. On the other hand, as mentioned earlier, Peter Bofinger, who is tellingly often termed by the media the “last Keynesian,” is connected to the union-linked Böckler Foundation as part of a Keynesian-Alternative thought collective. — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 650

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s map of how neoliberal thought collectives (per Mirowski’s roadmap) institutionalized nationally — German case parallels the US/Chicago and Chicago Boys networks in the reader’s other sources. — connects to: Neoliberal economists dominated German economic policy influence from 1945 to 1995. — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 44; Over half of Germany’s most visible economists connect through neoliberal institutions — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 645; German academic economics since 1945 was dominantly controlled by a neoliberal thought collective — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 652 (+3 more)
• CANDY: The media tag ‘the last Keynesian’ for Peter Bofinger is a light, tweetable detail showing how isolated Keynesians were.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 655; Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 650

Broader Connections

• Over half of Germany’s most visible economists connect through neoliberal institutions #corroborates (0.95) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 645
• German academic economics since 1945 was dominantly controlled by a neoliberal thought collective #expands (0.88) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 652
• The structuralist economist Nurkse belonged to the emerging neoliberal network #expands (0.80) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1351
• Interwar Vienna produced the extra-academic intellectual networks that seeded neoliberalism #expands (0.72) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 101