Full employment was the centrepiece of the economic policy of social democracy in the post-war period. Whilst the role of Keynesianism in policy making may be exaggerated, it offered the prospect of maintaining full employment without any section of society having to pay. Problems with the...

The paper considers how the Treuhandanstalt's legal identity as both a publicand private entity helps to explain the process of privatization or creation of property by the state after 1989. I argue the agency did not easily fit within the rigid categories of the German legal system. Moreover,...

A widely held view is that, since the 1970s, the nation-state has suffered a significant reduction in its capacity to achieve national economic policy goals through the regulation of the financial system; as a result, national political economies are now characterized by a market-driven...

Does the partisan character of governing parties play a role in the formation of fiscal policy? The conventional view is that the left tends toward excessive deficits while the right practices a more prudent and restrictive fiscal policy. However, there is little evidence that would sustain such...

This paper critically examines the debate on corporate governance and the claim (often made in Anglo-American companies) that the close links between German banks and industry are primarily responsible for the longer-term investment strategies and greater quality competitiveness of German...

The vocational training system is an important factor within the German institutionalframework. Its high output of skilled and well-educated employees provides a basis for Germanys export success and innovation. In the last few years, however,growing concern has been expressed about the...

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...

In order to shed light on the recent debates that are reinterpreting the role played by organized employers in the development of modern social policy, this paperexamines the origin of the system of contributory unemployment insurance during the Weimar period. Contrary to the claims of the...

This paper discusses the adjustment of large firms in France, in particular how theyregionalised their production structures in the 1980s. Throughout the Golden Age,large firms had geographically reorganised their activities: strategic planning remained in Paris, while the actual production was...