Kristen Nordhaug – författare

Over the last decade, political economists and other macro-oriented scholars have increasingly focused on the comparative specificities of distinct capitalist systems. Mostly, these systems are studied as national systems. Such models of capitalism are often studied with reference to various institutional dimensions: financial systems, labour relations, welfare state institutions, corporate governance, economic policy making, etc. This volume brings innovative and synthetic contributions combining as many as these institutional dimensions as possible. The issue contains papers by Robert Boyer, A. Tylecote & F. Visintin, Chris McNally & William Lazonick. It also contains a special section based on a contribution by Michael Shalev, 'Limits and alternatives to multiple regression in comparative political economy', which addresses techniques of analysing the variety of political-economic constellations in a methodological way. Shalevs views are critically scrutinized by a number of leading scholars, including Charles Ragin, Ro Rothstein, Gosta Esping-Andersen, Jonas Pontusson and others. This book series is available electronically online.

This book is intended for policy-makers, academics and students of development studies, area studies, political economy, geography and political science. Three of the best global performers in terms of economic growth are authoritarian states led by communist parties. The ‘socialist market economy’ model employed in China, Vietnam and Laos performs better than the economic systems in countries at a similar level of income per capita on a wide range of development indicators, yet market reforms and governance failures have led to highly unequal societies and significant environmental problems. This book presents the first comparative study of development in these three countries. Written by country experts and scholars of development studies, it explores the ongoing quest for market versus state within their model, and the coherence of their development. Chapter 5 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.