------------ EH.NET BOOK REVIEW -------------- Response to Graham Brownlow's review of Harm G. Schr�ter, _The Americanization of the European Economy: A Compact Survey of American Economic Influence in Europe since the 1880s_. By Harm G. Schr�ter, Historisk Institutt, Universitetet i Bergen. Graham Brownlow has reviewed my book extremely negatively -- and he is entitled to his opinion. But reviewers have standards to uphold, the central one being to give a reasoned and fair-minded appraisal. Achieving this involves at least three interrelated elements: 1) presenting the book's contents accurately; 2) not altering or fabricating issues in the book and then attacking them as inadequate; and 3) not exaggerating -- or minimizing -- issues out of perspective. Unfortunately, the execution of these elements in Brownlow's review is not faultless. The book not only identifies three waves of Americanization, as Brownlow duly states, but explains why they developed, why the first two petered out, and why a succeeding wave has always emerged (at least to date). In short, my book gives reasons for the Americanization of European economic life. Americanization is a process of transfer, rooted in cultural values, and these values unfortunately cannot be quantified. The quantitative intractability of the book's definition of Americanization -- contrary to Brownlow's reading, I never used Americanization as a synonym for convergence of growth rates and the `Golden Age' is his phrase not mine -- clearly annoys Brownlow: "this reviewer would have preferred a single definition that could better lend itself to measurement. Schr�ter's suggestion that such a more quantitative approach would be 'misleading' again does not convince this reviewer." Here I am afraid that we must agree to disagree. Brownlow identifies several issues and examples that might have been taken up in a work on Americanization. He finds it strange that "the post-1945 Americanization of the global economics profession" and that "the relevant literature on the uniqueness of British economic performance" are not mentioned. His identification is correct, but these are among the many interesting and important issues that are left uncovered in this short work because they are not directly related to the core of the book's argument on the Americanization of the European economy. He is also justified in regretting the uneven coverage of the smaller European economies; the neglect of the Celtic Tiger was especially regrettable -- mea culpa. In general, however, the book's emphasis on Germany, France, Italy, and Great Britain is the inevitable result of the great economic and political weight of these countries as well as of existing scientific literature. But what about the "elementary errors," "glaring errors," "errors of fact," and "many errors of historical fact" that "reduce the credibility of the book"? Here Brownlow overreaches himself in enthusiastic one-upmanship, abetted by skewed or restricted readings of the actual text and its context. That I refer to Hayek's _Road to Serfdom_ by the date of its first reprint (1946) rather than its first publication two years earlier is hardly an egregious error of interpretation. The objection of the linking of Hayek and Friedman is misconstrued. Referring to the Chicago School is admittedly facile shorthand for a diverse group of persons and opinions, but for Brownlow to restrict its meaning to Milton Friedman's monetarism is narrow-minded. The text does not say that Hayek was a "Friedmanite monetarist" -- that is his construction; the passage refers to their common opposition to welfare-state economics and support for "a capitalist economic order based on private property and a free, competitive market." Brownlow will surely recall that Hayek and Friedman were frequently mentioned together, however uncritically, in the political-economic debates of the 1970s and 1980s; John Kenneth Galbraith even referred to Friedman as Hayek's "coadjutor." Brownlow's command of baseball history is commendable. However, the reference was to "professional team sports" in general and not just to baseball. It is also true that the forerunner of the National Basketball League started in 1898, but the forerunner of the National Football League did not emerge until 1920. The general dating might indeed better have been formulated as "the end of the nineteenth century" rather than "the beginning of the twentieth century," but the point is hardly momentous; the important issue is the development of all team sports as big business and mass entertainment from the 1950s. Brownlow's objection to the book's characterization of EQUIS is also misconstrued and misleading. He is, of course, right to say that "EQUIS is in fact European in origin," and if he reads my text again he will find that I do not say that it is not. However, EQUIS is clearly a take-over of American business school standards (AACSB), however much it might trumpet its Europeanness, and it thus represents one of the central concerns of my study: why did many Europeans feel the need to establish a standard of business education and why did they chose to base this standard on the American model? I thought I had made it clear in the text that EQUIS was an example of an Americanized, rather than American, standard, but I evidently let him down. Brownlow's inflation of some peccadilloes to "extremely careless [general presentation]" replete with "far too many typos, spelling and grammatical errors to mention" is so intemperate that I wonder if we read the same book. That the location of an AFL-CIO conference was left with "a cryptic [where?]" is of course lamentable; likewise lamentable is the typesetting glitch that erroneously italicized two paragraphs. For them and for the non-italized book titles in the bibliography I do penance and say a mass of mea culpas. As for the rest -- if his contention is valid -- I can only assure him that considerable efforts -- both human and electronic -- were expended to insure the linguistic integrity of the text. My Canadian colleague's copyediting is generally regarded as very thorough, conscientious, and second to none, but clearly Brownlow's talents are even superior and I must remember to solicit his services for my future publications in English. As he can see on my website <http://www.harmschroeter.de> the book's topic is a long-standing research interest of mine, and there are several related works on the drawing board. Finally, I sincerely regret that Graham Brownlow's hopes and expectations were dashed and that he had to spend what was evidently a very disagreeable time "ploughing through this book." I can also comfort him that the operation of the capitalist marketplace has lessened the likelihood that unfortunate undergraduates might confront the book and "inescapably repeat its errors of fact and economic understanding": the printing sold out some time ago. However, he might want to keep his copy as an investment; stamps with blemishes often command a high price among collectors; could the same logic apply to bibliophiles? -------------- FOOTER TO EH.NET BOOK REVIEW -------------- EH.Net-Review mailing list [log in to unmask] http://eh.net/mailman/listinfo/eh.net-review