The Political Economy of Competitiveness: Corporate Performance and Public Policy (Routledge Studies in Contemporary Political Economy)
Michael Kitson
Language: English
Pages: 224
ISBN: 0415204968
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
The Political Economy of Competitiveness offers an original perspective on the relationship between economic theory and policy. It places the issues within an accessible political economy perspective.
Rejecting the narrowness of mainstream economics the authors deploy an interdisciplinary approach to the problem of economic growth, placing it in its historical and political context. Issues covered include:
* trade theory and policy
* industrial decline and policy
* markets, competition and innovation
* globalisation, unemployment and government policy.
The book provides a valuable guide to the major economic policy issues for both economists and business students.
How To Build A Great Customer Experience Through Innovation
The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives
Richistan: A Journey Through the American Wealth Boom and the Lives of the New Rich
Social Physics: How Good Ideas Spread- The Lessons from a New Science
The Trouble with Capitalism: An Enquiry into the Causes of Global Economic Failure (2nd Edition)
increased expenditure and falling tax revenues. The impact would of course have been larger if the Government had not consistently set the flotation price below the market valuation. Moreover, not only are the revenue benefits of privatisation small, but they are also transitory – you can only sell the ‘family silver’ once. Another aspect of the ‘enterprise culture’ has been the increased number of small firms and the expansion of self employment. Yet, the developments in the small business
sector do not suggest that government policy has had a significant positive impact. Although the increased number of the self employed does seem to be a 1980s phenomenon, the growth of small firms reflects a trend that started in the 1960s (Storey, 1994). Moreover, much of the growth of the self employed is a response to ‘negative’ factors – workers pushed into ‘entrepreneurship’ by unemployment and the contracting-out strategies of large firms (Kitson, 1995). Additionally, although an increasing
studies including those by Baumol (1967), Fuchs (1968), Saxonhouse (1985) and Summers (1985) have presented evidence that productivity differences are the main source of the decline in manufacturing employment, although others such as Marquand (1979) dispute that services have low productivity. Like much of the analysis of the service sector, the lagging productivity thesis is hampered by the data problems. In particular there are substantial difficulties in measuring productivity in services as
cumulative changes. Thus as Allyn Young stated, forces of economic change are endogenous: They are engendered from within the economic system. No analysis, of the forces making for economic equilibrium, forces that we might say are tangential at any moment of time, will serve to illumine this field, for movements away from equilibrium, departures from previous trends are characteristic of it. (Quoted in Kaldor, 1985, p. 64) The factor generating economic change for Young (1928) was increasing
market have had beneficial effects. This notion is based on a neoclassical view of the competitive process, where producers face a large number of competitors and price is the key indicator of competitiveness. (For a critique of the labour market flexibility thesis, see Michie and Sheehan, 1999·) In reality many firms have few effective competitors and the key factors which contribute to competitive advantage are product quality and the characteristics of the customer-client relationship (on