If you're looking for a juicy history dissertation topic, I would recommend the history of the financial analysis by investment banks, especially of overseas investment targets. As far as I know, nothing has been written about this, and it is an enormously important subject.
My impression is that overseas financial investment really gets going after WWII (I learned this in "Do You Sincerely Want To Get Rich," about the Bernie Cornfeld/OIC fraud) but the institutionalization really starts in the 1970s as part of the general globalization of finance.
But in therms of the history the development of analytic methods and practices, of standards and measures, of institutionalization via industry working groups, of regulatory standards and political oversight, etc. -- I know nothing detailed on this.
A book of this sort would provide a fundamental look into the epistemology of informal empire.
In short: what I think would be great would be an *historical ontology* of the development of the concepts, institutions, technologies, modes of classification, and techniques that made it possible for the postwar U.S. financial industry to “know” the rest of the world
