This paper examines the historical origins of the bank-based financial systems in Germany and Japan and the market-based financial system in the US. It critically examines the timing of industrialization (TOI) thesis, i.e. the assertion that variation in the current structure of financial...

Groupwork is a particular form of work organisation typical for German factories that has been strongly influenced by union views. Management and trade unions present it as a radical innovation that calls into question the principles of the former Taylorist organisation on the one hand, and the...

This paper proposes a model of efficiency wage with endogenous workers flows in interaction with imperfect competition on the product markets. Subject to economy-wide shocks, firms hire and fire workers thus generating a certain turnover. We show that the intensity of this turnover negatively...

This paper develops a theoretical analysis of training regimes as outcomes of a complementarity between organizational and institutional factors that determine firms and workers incentives as regards skills. Specifically, the paper proposes that, on the one hand, knowledge embeddedness within...

In June and July 1998, the United Auto Workers Union (UAW) engaged Flint General Motors workers in one of the longest strike to take place lately in United States. Officially, the strike was launched on Health and Safety issues, as globalisation and relocation of the company were non strikeable...

The German economy has widely been seen as failing to develop commercial innovation competencies necessary to compete in biotechnology, information technology, and other emerging new industries. Starting in the mid-1990s the German government has instituted a series of new technology policies...

How will EMU influence the European political economy? This paper argues that most of the likely alternatives are unsustainable for at least some of the EMU member-states. As a result, the Stability Pact imposed by the Kohl government and the Bundesbank is likely to be rejected by other...

According to the contemporary political economy literature on France, the country appears caught in the worst of all possible worlds: it fails to create the conditions for economic growth and employment by deregulating labour markets as the UK has done, and it lacks the institutional...

According to the contemporary political economy literature on France, the country appears caught in the worst of all possible worlds: it fails to create the conditions for economic growth and employment by deregulating labour markets as the UK has done, and it lacks the institutional...

Can German national institutional frameworks be reconfigured to allow radical innovation in science-based industries? This paper examines the development of commercial technologies for entrepreneurial biotechnology start-up firms in Germany. During the 1980s and early 1990s an inadequate...