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Marktwirtschaft, Wissenschaft und politische Intervention: die staatliche Stützung der bundesdeutschen Industrie nach dem »Wirtschaftswunder«. Mit dem Abflauen des Nachkriegsbooms in den 1960er Jahren geriet die bundesdeutsche Industrie unter verstärkten Anpassungsdruck. Zunehmende Rufe nach staatlicher Unterstützung resultierten in Subventionen, die zur Dämpfung von Krisen der Deindustrialisierung ebenso eingesetzt wurden wie zur Förderung von Branchen, die als besonders zukunftsfähig galten. Die Etablierung eines neuen Politikfelds namens »Strukturpolitik« sollte diese Eingriffe in den wirtschaftlichen Strukturwandel gleichzeitig legitimieren und begrenzen. Forderungen nach einem drastischen Subventionsabbau standen jedoch in den 1970er und 1980er Jahren zunehmende Leistungen an die Industrie gegenüber. Das Feld blieb von Aushandlungsprozessen zwischen Politik und Wirtschaft sowie von einem Spannungsverhältnis zwischen wissenschaftlicher Politikberatung und pragmatischer Praxis geprägt. Ralf Ahrens analysiert die Debatten über Legitimität und Formen industriepolitischer Intervention bis zum Ende der »alten« Bundesrepublik. In Fallstudien zur Stahlindustrie, zum Flugzeugbau und zur Computerindustrie zeigt er, dass die Subventionierung über Regierungswechsel hinweg vor allem von Branchenkonstellationen bestimmt war.

Modeling short-term interest rates as following regime-switching processes has become increasingly popular. Theoretically, regime-switching models are able to capture rational expectations of infrequently occurring discrete events. Technically, they allow for potential time-varying stationarity. After discussing both aspects with reference to the recent literature, this paper provides estimations of various univariate regime-switching specifications for the German three-month money market rate and bivariate specifications additionally including the term spread. However, the main contribution is a multi-step out-of-sample forecasting competition. It turns out that forecasts are improved substantially when allowing for state-dependence. Particularly, the informational content of the term spread for future short rate changes can be exploited optimally within a multivariate regime-switching framework.

This study uses Markov-switching models to evaluate the informational content of the term structure as a predictor of recessions in eight OECD countries. The empirical results suggest that for all countries the term spread is sensibly modelled as a two-state regime-switching process. Moreover, our simple univariate model turns out to be a filter that transforms accurately term spread changes into turning point predictions. The term structure is confirmed to be a reliable recession indicator. However, the results of probit estimations show that the markov-switching filter does not significantly improve the forecasting ability of the spread. Klassifikation:

Focusing on the time span from the 1960s to the late 1980s, that is, on the period during which Airbus established itself as a serious competitor on the world market, this article analyses the German aircraft industry's interests, its representation within the transnational Airbus project, and the relevance of what might be called 'Europeanness'. Occasionally also touching upon the situation in its partner countries, the central question is whether the respective political strategies of collaboration in the German aircraft industry were motivated by self-serving national interests or broader European ones. The article is divided into three sections. It begins by scrutinizing the motivations of German politics in the establishment and promotion of the Airbus project. Second, it deals with the representation of national interests in the allocation of production shares and the organization of cooperation, and, finally, with the European aspects of the massive subsidization of national manufacturers. It comes to the conclusion that the German case in particular illustrates that European collaboration in the aircraft sector was appreciated as an instrument to facilitate the survival of national industries pursuing their own business interests. The establishment of Airbus was supported as a European project to ensure the survival of the German aircraft industry and sometimes even as an instrument of business concentration. Nevertheless, notions about European integration or Franco-German friendship certainly increased the willingness to spend a lot of money on the Airbus project as the flagship of entanglement and interconnectedness in a 'future industry'.

Am Schnittpunkt zwischen Wirtschafts- und "allgemeiner" Geschichte situiert Ralf Ahrens die Unternehmen als zentrale Akteure der modernen Geschichte: Sie dominieren Wertschöpfung und ökonomisch-technischen Strukturwandel, sie prägen geografische wie gesellschaftliche Räume, sie beeinflussen kulturelle Wahrnehmungsmuster – und nicht zuletzt auch die Politik. In seinem Beitrag präsentiert Ahrens theoretische Rahmungen der Unternehmensgeschichte genauso wie ihre Institutionalisierung, ihre aktuellen Schwerpunkte und ihre Anschlussmöglichkeiten für andere Bereiche der zeithistorischen Forschung.

Abstract
After the end of the postwar reconstruction boom, the decline of traditional large-scale industries and intensified international competition increased the demand for state aid in the Federal Republic of Germany. This article discusses the relevance of overall industrial policy concepts for the utilization of subsidies from the 1960s to the 1980s. Concentrating on the federal level, it delineates the development of industrial subsidies in relation to the financial support of other sectors and identifies the main benefitting industries. Then the focus turns to attempts to professionalize reporting on subsidies and ideas on the "scientization" of industrial policy, the disillusionment with these instruments, and debates about subsidy cuts. Overall it becomes clear that the extent and composition of federal subsidies were not the result of a coherent policy.

Theory matters. Most historians would probably agree with this postulate, in the sense that theories from disciplines such as sociology, economics or psychology can sharpen historical analyses of any topic (though many of them may prefer quite pragmatic, common-sense approaches in their own empirical studies). But when it comes to a historical understanding of a phenomenon like marketization, theory does remain an analytical resource – and at the same time turns into a multifaceted object of research. The way we think about markets is highly affected by theorists, and not only by their ideas but also by their effectiveness in making them influential over specific periods of time.

Abstract
Immediately following World War II, the allied occupational powers started a process of denazifying West German business in more or less the same way as the political and administrative apparatus. Initial approaches to solve the task by a radical purge of highly incriminated company managers soon gave way to more extensive investigations of party members and Nazi sympathizers also on lower ranks. Denazification escalated into bureaucratic mass procedures and finally ended up in various forms of amnesty and pardon in the late 1940s and early 1950s. A key feature in this process was the successively growing participation of German actors like various commissions, chambers of commerce and the companies themselves. On the one hand, comprehensive investigation and punishment under a re-installed rule of law had to rely upon cooperation of German actors and their expertise on the reality of the Nazi past; on the other hand, the integration of business itself into denazification procedures allowed company managers to benefit from informational advantages. Focussing the interaction between denazification authorities and business in the three West German zones of occupation, the article argues that under the general conditions of economic reconstruction and democratization the degeneration from purge to pardon was hardly avoidable, but that nevertheless the effects of temporary punishments should not be underestimated.