1. *The author would like to thank Christina Beharry, Albert Carreras, Nick Crafts, Fernando Guirao, Pablo Martin Acena, Elena Martinez Ruiz, Leandro Prados de la Escosura, and Albrecht Ritschl for comments and encouragement. Comments from two anonymous referees and the editor in chief of this publication are also greatly appreciated. Research on which this article is based was conducted prior to the author joining the staff of the European Central Bank and was made possible thanks to financial support provided by the London School of Economics and the University of London Irwin Studentship. The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author.
2. 1. D. D. Eisenhower, "Special Message to Congress on Foreign Economic Policy, March 30, 1954," inPublic Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Dwight D. Eisenhower(Washington, DC, 1954), 352-64.
3. 2. These were the conclusions of the Randall Commission Report, which were to serve as the basis of foreign economic policy from 1954 onward. See K. C. Pearce,Rostow, Kennedy, and the Rhetoric of Foreign Aid(East Lansing, MI, 2001).
4. 3. See, e.g., D. B. Kunz,Butter and Guns: America's Cold War Economic Diplomacy(New York, 1997); and F. J. Gavin,Gold, Dollars, and Power: The Politics of International Monetary Relations, 1958-1971(Chapel Hill, NC, 2004). The question of American ability to influence the economic policymaking of Marshall Plan aid recipients has been at center stage of the literature on the Marshall Plan for at least two decades. See, e.g., A. Milward,The Reconstruction of Western Europe, 1947-1951(London, 1987 [1984]), 469. Case studies of American attempts at exercising pressure to influence domestic policies in the United Kingdom, France, and Italy have shown that the United States enjoyed very limited bargaining power. See P. Burnham,The Political Economy of Postwar Reconstruction(London/New York, 1990); and C. Esposito,America's Feeble Weapon: Funding the Marshall Plan in France and Italy, 1948-1950(Westport, CT, 1994). An exception to the scarcity of monographs on U.S. foreign assistance programs during the 1950s is J. B. Alterman,Egypt and American Foreign Assistance, 1952-1956: Hopes Dashed(New York, 2002).
5. 4. J. L. Gaddis, "On Starting All Over Again: A Naive Approach to the Study of the Cold War," inReviewing the Cold War: Approaches, Interpretations, Theory, ed. O. A. Westad (London, 2000), 31.