Der Vortrag würdigt das 1984 erschienene Buch des Jubilars, Der kurze Traum immerwährender Prosperität: Eine Neuinterpretation der industriell-kapitalistischen Entwicklung im Europa des 20. Jahrhunderts. Im Licht der Erfahrung der seitdem vergangenen zwei Jahrzehnte wird diskutiert, wo und in...

Skills and skill formation have become central topics in contemporary political economy. This essay traces a key concept in the current debate - the distinction between general and specific skills - back to its diverse origins in American postwar labor economics, comparative industrial...

Flexible markets require flexible societies; humans, however, need a stable social order. According to received wisdom, when capitalist development razes traditional social structures, society fights back, and welfare state policies organize new stability to replace the old. More market produces...

In most rich democracies one finds a tendency for the share in public finance that is available for discretionary spending to shrink. This is because tax revenues do not keep pace with simultaneous increases in fixed expenditures and growing pressures for fiscal consolidation. The present paper...

The 'financial crisis' and its sequel, the current sovereign debt crisis, appear to be the latest permutations of an old conflict between capitalism and democracy that forcefully reasserted itself after the end of the postwar growth period. Today's calamities were preceded by high inflation in...

Die Arbeitsgruppe Beschäftigung der von NRW-Ministerpräsident Jürgen Rüttgers eingesetzten Zukunftskommission hat umfassende Empfehlungen für die künftige Wirtschafts- und Arbeitsmarktpolitik in Nordrhein-Westfalen vorgelegt. Das Papier der von IZA-Direktor Klaus F. Zimmermann geleiteten...

Der Beitrag thematisiert zunächst die Rahmenbedingungen auf dem Arbeitsmarkt und die spezifische Krise des deutschen Beschäftigungssystems (stabile Koinzidenz hoher Arbeitslosigkeit mit einer niedrigen Erwerbsquote). Ziel der Arbeitsmarkt- und Beschäftigungspolitik müsste es sein, eine auch...

Karl Marx observed long ago that all economic struggles invite moral struggles, or masquerade as such. The reverse may be true as well: deep moral-political conflicts may be waged through the manipulation of economic resources. Using the recent financial and Eurozone crises as empirical...

Regional disparities within the European Union have always been perceived as an impediment to monetary integration. This is why discussions on a joint currency, from their very beginning, were linked to compensatory payments in the form of regional policy payments. Structural assistance to poor...

The rise of the consolidation state follows the displacement of the classical tax state, or Steuerstaat, by what I have called the debt state, a process that began in the 1980s in all rich capitalist democracies. Consolidation is the contemporary response to the "fiscal crisis of the state"...