Technological Advance, Transatlantic Trade, External Equilibrium. American Financial Assistance to the Italian Nuclear Power Programmes from the 1960s Through to the First Oil Crisis", in Knud Andresen and Stefan Muller (eds.),Contesting Deregulation: Debates, Practices and Developments in the West since the 1970s. New York-Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2017.

Through the case study of US nuclear assistance programs to Italy from the 1960s through the 1970s, this chapter challenges a widely-held scholarly view according to which US energy diversification programs were complementary, rather than alternative, to a stiff dependence of most Western European partners on foreign oil supply. Through the case study of Italy we make the argument that Washington committed to lessening the dependence of its oil-scarce partners on the OPEC oil producing countries in order to secure stable US-European economic bonds. Against this backdrop, this work explores the interplay between US assistance and a variety of issues in Italy's external equilibrium that ranged from foreign exchange stability, capital market developments, transatlantic trade and technological transfer. Drawing on the Italian case, straightforwardly the United States promoted the development of nuclear power for peaceful uses in Western Europe to bolster European economic integration and transatlantic trade. However, according to this study it was only from the end of cheap oil and the tottering of international monetary stability to the devaluation of the US dollar that American assistance to finance the development of nuclear production was linked to both the promotion of technological advance and competitiveness across Western Europe, and an expansion in transatlantic commercial bonds.