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of foreign markets for American products which made it 
possible for oligopolies to escape the claustrophobic 
conditions of a restricted home market. The newly 
aquired habit of the concerns to spread out into the most 
varied fields of activities also created new opportunities 
for investment. 
In Europe the factor of public and military spending was 
also of great impottance in some countries in expanding 
demandbut there was, on the continent at least, an additional 
factor which stimulated private investment directly. 
Europe had for one or another reason been out of tauch 
with the technological development in the U.S. and so 
a backlog of imnovative opportunities had accumulated 
which after the war became available in one lump, facilitated 
by Marshall plan and technical assistence. Europe was 
catching up technologically with the U.S. which means it 
was going through at unusual speed a technical evolution 
which had taken a much longer time to develop originally. 
Productivity growth at that time was about twice as great 
in Europe as in the U.S. It stands to reason that this 
involved a very strong stimulus to investment activity. 
e / 
On the supply side the barriDrs to an/exceptionally quick 
growth were removed by the availability of labour from 
agriculture ( in Germany also displaced persons ). 
Thus an exceptional speed of development was made possible 
by drawing on a reserve of know-how and of labour. This 
process must have been exhausted long before the end of the 
prosperity phase in the 70s, but in the meantime there had 
devejpjbped an automatic buoyancy, both in Europe and in U.S.