Note: Several chapters in this e-book were published as a result of a workshop that was organize at CES in April 2017. For details and a list of participants, see the agenda of "Workshop: Incompatible Economic Philosophies: German Ordo vs. U.S. Pragmatism."

German economics and, as a result, German economic policymaking, appear to be a land apart. Critics have even suggested that German policymakers and academics live in a “parallel intellectual universe”. The conflict, for example, with US economic policy pragmatism is a hardy perennial in international debates – dating back long before the most recent struggles in the G20 context. Similarly, the Eurozone crisis has opened fault lines between German economists and policymakers and those in a number of Eurozone (in particular periphery) countries. This column introduces a new eBook explaining the historical development of the ordoliberal school of economics and its influence on German policymaking, and contrasting it critically with what we like to call the Anglo-Saxon-Latin pragmatism of economic policymaking. The contributors come from a wide spectrum of economic schools of thoughts and include both academics and (former) policymakers that have had to directly deal with the consequences of these fault lines.