Models of Capitalism: Growth and Stagnation in the Modern Era
David Coates
Language: English
Pages: 318
ISBN: B00T07FZPY
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
The contemporary debate on economic policy is dominated by the issue of 'which model of capitalism works best'.
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internationally focused than their UK contemporaries (Calder, 1993: 11). There is clear research evidence too that the cost of loans made by Japanese banks to companies within their industrial groupings was low by international standards, at least until the 1990s (Tabb, 1995: 103; Nakatani, 1995: 51). There is clear evidence that the system of interlocking and stable shareholding to which the banks were central freed Japanese industrial managers from any pressure for high-dividend distribution
relations are the principal factor in Japanese success in US markets. They hold the key both to the quality of Japanese goods (through the skill levels of Japanese workers) and to the propensity of Japanese industry for innovation and change. UK industry cuts (segments in Lazonick's phrase) the hierarchical triangle of generalist managers, specialist technicians and routine operatives just below the generalist managers with their 'quest for elite status' . US companies characteristically segment
levels in the UK well below those commonplace in such successful economies as Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Canada, Austria, France, West Germany and Belgium (Feinstein, 1988: 11). What actually happened to the relationship between UK trade unions and the Labour Government in the 1970s was that it quickly fell back into a quite standard social democratic form, the unions delivering their side of the social accord while progressively failing to oblige the government to deliver its. Between 1974 and
competitiveness are invariably seen as incompatible, and policy is inexorably directed at reducing the first in order to enhance the second. This is why one of the main research questions underpinning this study is whether 'flexible' labour markets are a necessary condition for successful capital accumulation: whether they were in the immediate past, and whether the new conditions of intensified global competition now make the erosion of trade union rights and levels of labour remuneration even
influence on corporate policy, with the result that the cost of capital to large Japanese companies has been low throughout the postwar period (when compared with the cost of capital faced by foreign companies), that Japanese companies have been freer than their US counterparts to take a longer-term view of how and when to cover their capital costs, and that the rate of return required of them (even in the long term) has been commensurately lower. Indeed there is clear evidence that Japanese