Employment 'Miracles'

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Employment “miracles” challenges the conventional wisdom that full employment and good overall economic performance is a function of a particular recipe of policies and institutions. To the extent that deliberate policies have played a role in recent success stories, they are embedded in nationally specific social, economic, and political institutions, which cannot be easily emulated. The book therefore offers a stern warning against the temptation, so rarely resisted, to draw sweeping generalizations from particular national “models.” But while there is no magic bullet, the book is optimistic about the capacity of countries with very different institutions to be successful in a fiercely competitive global economy. There is no necessary tradeoff between competitiveness and a large redistributive welfare state, and success is not synonymous with US-style deregulation. This is a point that is brought out in a nuanced and insightful fashion by the individual country chapters. Anyone interested in understanding the relationship between the economy, public policy, and economic performance is well-advised to read this important and timely new book. Torben Iversen Professor of Government Center for European Studies Harvard University

• Table of Contents - 6 Preface - 10 1 Introduction:Miracles,Mirages and Markets - 12 Introduction - 12 Luck, pluck and stuck in the employment miracles - 17 Globalisation and the miracles - 20 A specific (corporatist) variety of capitalism? - 26 What the chapters say - 35 2 The Dutch Model:Magic in a Flat Landscape? - 40 Introduction - 40 Labour market performance - 43 Economic performance - 46 Social outcomes - 49 Policies, the model and the results - 53 Conclusion: luck, pluck or stuck? - 59 3 Employment and Unemployment in Denmark and Sweden:Success or Failure for the Universal Welfare Model? - 66 Introduction - 66 Employment and unemployment: what happened? - 67 Unemployment and employment policies - 73 Policies and outcome – Is there a link? - 78 Conclusions - 81 4 The Evolution of the Finnish Model in the 1990s : From Depression to High-Tech Boom - 88 Introduction - 88 The background of the Finnish miracle: the economic crisis of the 1990s - 90 Political response to the crisis - 94 The recovery and the Finnish ‘miracle’ - 95 Structural issues:welfare state and labour market institutions - 104 The Nordic welfare state: Good to economic growth? - 105 Labour market institutions and corporatism - 106 Conclusion - 108 5 The Swiss Miracle:Low growth and high employment - 112 Introduction - 112 Corporatism in a fragmented polity - 112 A coordinated market economy? - 115 Recent developments - 116 Economic and labour market development - 118 Disentangling the Swiss ‘miracle’ - 122 An expanding welfare system - 128 Conclusion - 131 6 Recasting the Story of Ireland’s Miracle:Policy,Politics or Profit? - 134 The constituents of economic growth and development - 135 Possible explanations - 138 The costs: sustainability? - 146 The significance of the Irish case - 153 7 The Australian Miracle:Luck,Pluck or Being Stuck Down Under? - 158 Introduction - 158 Exports and the current account balance - 166 Employment and collective bargaining - 172 Fiscal balance - 179 Conclusion - 182 8 Last Year’s Model? Reflections on the American Model of Employment Growth - 184 Introduction - 184 An American success story 185 - 186 The American model - 190 Limits to the liberal market economy model - 196 Conclusion - 203 9 The German Contrast.On Bad Comparisons,Special Circumstances,Luck and Policies That Turned Out to Be Wrong - 206 ‘Germany isn’t working’ - 206 The German economy in comparison - 209 A bad employment record because of labour market and welfare rigidities? - 212 Accidental circumstances: housing bubble versus unification - 218 On strong German regions - 224 Prospects and possible lessons from the ‘model cases’ - 228 10 Conclusion:The Importance of Lucky Circumstances,and Still the Liberal-Social Democratic Divide - 232 In sum - 232 Recent developments and prospects - 234 What is to be learned? - 240 ‘Competitive Corporatism’? - 242 Still the liberal-social democratic divide - 245 Contributors - 280 Index - 284 Bibliography - 250