This paper aims to shed light on the following issues: country-specific/country cluster-specific approaches to competitiveness; alternative routes to competitiveness, relying either on national strategies or business endeavour or both; instrument types – institutions and policies – as well...

Mature capitalism and market economy realities become intelligible also by scrutinizing their “prodigal children”: modern business corporations. But these are not some undivided entities. Beyond the place in the global division of labour, they are fiefs of in-built specialization among the...

This paper intends to draw the attention on the very subtle consequences of the corruption in the operational field, the deviation from the institutional arrangement in use. We will not insist for example on the subject according to which “the public domain”, as expression of the “joint...

Traditional literature regarding “corporate governance” finds the “tension between ownership and management” (as it was shaped by the agency theory) to be a node in the logic of what should be the answer to the question “how the structure of the corporation property can be designated...

Modelul german e descris cu nedisimulata mândrie drept economie sociala de piata. Soziale Marktwirtschaft- ul german s-a cladit în timp pe un larg consens popular, a carui expresie pe scena politica a reprezentat-o duopolul format din social-democrati (SPD) si crestin democrati (CDU), care în...

It is often argued that while ambitious and expensive social spending was in the past compatible with competitiveness, ongoing globalisation makes the reconciliation of EU social and economic goals more difficult. Lisbon addicted at the level of discourse, Europe is still performing unevenly,...

It is “mainstream” to say that the World Trade Organization (WTO) and Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) lead to the liberalization of the member states’ economies. Even “old school” pro free trade authors, known nowadays rather as being “against the tide” for promoting unilateral...

At the beginning of the 80’s one South American dictator had discovered economic freedom, while Europe’s democracies were refining the Bismarckian objective of intergeneration dependency. Enlightened by the economist José Piñera, an unknown figure at the time, he had realized that pensions...

The fallibility of the “efficiency” concept as developed by the neoclassical economists (in a non-personal and non-subjective perspective) laid the foundations for an allegedly objective and value-free – but, de facto, a meaningless, nonrealistic and arbitrary – perspective on...

A proven fact though is that an “economic crisis” is also an “intellectual crisis” in the economists tribe. For almost a century economists didn’t manage to reach a consensus on the final cause and perfect answer to such economic troubles. Mainstreamers say there is neither bubble nor...