In 1481 when King John II ascended to the throne of Portugal, it was on the verge of bankruptcy. A quarter of a century later, Portugal all but ruled the world, economically and scientifically – at least. This article seeks to investigate the policy decisions of King John II and his successor,...

This paper reconstructs the economic policy debates in Bulgaria during the Great Depression. The goal is twofold. First, it depicts the development of Bulgarian economic thought in the inter-war period and analyzes its intellectual relationships to the evolution of European (especially...

In spite of the manifold critique about the state of economics in the aftermath of the financial crisis, an even increasing presence of economists and economic experts can be observed in the public sphere during the last years. On the one hand this reflects the still dominant position of...

A year after I started this project under the auspices of the Flynn Grant from Georgetown University's Center for German and European Studies it is finally finished, and only then because of the invaluable assistance of numerous kind individuals. In Cologne, Germany, the Institut für...

This article shows how the network structure of economic expertise can influence the diffusion of ideas and economic policymaking in times of crisis. Applying social network analysis, we analyse the networks of economic policy advice in the United States and Germany around the Council of...

Was Spanish fiscal policy destabilizing? We estimate policy reaction functions and test the impact of fiscal shocks on growth volatility over the period 19501998. We find that a transition from pro-cyclical to countercyclical fiscal policy occurred in the late years of the Franco regime,...

This paper traces the development of Bertil Ohlin's views on issues such as the causes of the depression of the 1930's, policies against the depression, the use of fiscal and monetary policies, and tariffs and public works to stabilize the business cycle. We examine about 80 of his articles on...

We try to measure the impact work creation programs and rearmament had on employment and production of the German economy before World War II. Theoretically based on an extended version of the conventional input-output analysis, our model or analytical framework integrates the Keynesian...

The historical forerunners of contemporary austerity are still largely unexplored. This essay considers the "liberal phase" of Fascist Italy (1922-1925) as a case study to explain austerity as a full-blown rationality, that is intrinsically, and simultaneously, theory and practice, encompassing...

Current debates on austerity often forget that these policies are almost 100 years old .This paper explores how the combination of austerity and technocracy acted as a powerful tool to secure the compliance of European countries to socio-economic stabilization after WWI. Austerity emerged as an...