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, loc. 655