We develop a general model of redistribution and use it to account for the remarkable variance in... more We develop a general model of redistribution and use it to account for the remarkable variance in government redistribution across democracies. We show that the electoral system plays a key role because it shapes the nature of political parties and the composition of governing coalitions, whether these are conceived as electoral alliances between classes or alliances between class parties. Our argument implies a) that center-left governments dominate under PR systems, while center-right governments dominate under majoritarian systems, and b) that PR systems redistribute more than majoritarian systems. We test our argument on panel data for redistribution, government partisanship, and electoral system in advanced democracies.
A central element of the argument of this book is the symbiosis between the interests of the skil... more A central element of the argument of this book is the symbiosis between the interests of the skilled, educated workforces of the advanced capitalist sectors and their support for the political maintenance and promotion of those sectors. This chapter examines how this argument works in the technological regime of Fordism. It outlines how differences in institutions shaped initial government responses to the end of Fordism and deindustrialization. Like other advanced technologies, Fordism represents a particular organization of location cospecific assets with wide-ranging consequences for both economic and political institutions. The chapter begins by explaining this organization. It then turns to the forces of change that ultimately upended the Fordist equilibrium, starting in the second half of the 1970s.
This chapter considers the “second-order” effects of the transition to the knowledge economy. Thi... more This chapter considers the “second-order” effects of the transition to the knowledge economy. This means the set of preferences, beliefs, and party allegiances that are crystallizing as a consequence of the political-economic realities brought about by the knowledge economy. Chapter 3 considered “first-order” effects—immediate policy responses reflecting existing political coalitions—and showed that these responses were relatively limited and in most countries, failed to offer much compensation for those who lost out in the collapse of the Fordist economy. This chapter argues that this failure has created the political conditions for the rise of populism. Populism refers to a set of preferences and beliefs that rejects established parties and elites, that sees established politicians as gaming the system to their own advantage, and that at the same time sees the poor as undeserving of government support.
Kreuzer regards these East European cases as "the most significant challenge" to our theory. Give... more Kreuzer regards these East European cases as "the most significant challenge" to our theory. Given his goal in adjudicating between our model and Boix's, it is less than even-handed of Kreuzer not to subject Boix's model to them. We did and found that Boix's model also collapses. Web Appendix for "Coevolution of Capitalism and Political Representation" May 2010 references. The cited book (Braunias, 1932) is on electoral laws, and says nothing about economic characteristics. 1. Kreuzer's objections to our Table 4 historical classifications.
Following the post-financial crisis recession, the UK and other high-income countries have experi... more Following the post-financial crisis recession, the UK and other high-income countries have experienced slow growth and stagnant productivity, along with both low inflation and, more recently, low unemployment. This column introduces an intuitive macroeconomic model that helps explain this puzzling combination.
This article elaborates a new framework for understanding how variations in national institutions... more This article elaborates a new framework for understanding how variations in national institutions structure economic policy and performance. Applying the new economics of organization to the macroeconomy, it argues that the core competencies of firms depend on their capacities to coordinate with other actors in five spheres of the economy. It explores the differences between liberal market economies where such coordination is achieved mainly by market mechanisms and coordinated market economies where strategic interaction is more central to coordination. The framework generates a theory of comparative institutional advantage which suggests that national institutional frameworks need not converge in the face of pressures from globalization because firms can exploit and will often offer political support for the distinctive institutional advantages present in their political economy. These comparative advantages support different types of innovation and are often characterized by the ...
The question of inequality has moved decisively to the top of the contemporary intellectual agend... more The question of inequality has moved decisively to the top of the contemporary intellectual agenda. Going beyond Thomas Piketty’s focus on wealth, increasing inequalities of various kinds, and their impact on social, political and economic life, now present themselves among the most urgent issues facing scholars in the humanities and the social sciences. Key among these is the relationship between inequality, crime and punishment. The propositions that social inequality shapes crime and punishment, and that crime and punishment themselves cause or exacerbate inequality, are conventional wisdom. Yet, paradoxically, they are also controversial. In this volume, historians, criminologists, lawyers, sociologists and political scientists come together to try to solve this paradox by unpacking these relationships in different contexts. The causal mechanisms underlying these correlations call for investigation by means of a sustained programme of research bringing different disciplines to b...
Contrary to the predictions of a long and distinguished literature, spanning from Marx on the Lef... more Contrary to the predictions of a long and distinguished literature, spanning from Marx on the Left through Polanyi and Schumpeter to Mill and Hayek on the Right, that saw democracy and capitalism as partially if not fully incompatible, democratic capitalism reigned unchallenged in the advanced world throughout most of the twentieth century. It did so, according to Democracy and Prosperity, Torben Iversen and David Soskice’s new, bold, and, overall, optimistic book, because democracy and capitalism are indeed “generally mutually supportive” (p. 5). Democracy “makes” (rather than replaces) markets (p. 258). In turn, a well-functioning capitalism, by delivering growth to an expanding middle class, makes democracy possible. According to Iversen and Soskice, that “symbiotic relationship” (p. xii) derives, in a nutshell, from the internal logic of both capitalism and democracy. On the one hand, advanced capitalism relies on the use of an educated labor force whose skills are “cospecific with other skilled workers, and ... with other relevant technology” (p. 14). To operate efficiently, firms and skilled individuals “colocate” together in regional clusters. “Cospecificity” and “colocation” then have two crucial consequences. First, both capital and skilled labor benefit from, and therefore demand, public goods—ranging from well-run bureaucracies to infrastructures and education—that generate those skills and reinforce the complementarity of factors. Second, capital is not footloose: firms, embedded in production clusters, are relatively immobile and hence deprived of Lindblom’s structural power to exit. On the other hand, skilled labor, which includes educated workers proper and “a wide aspirational community of families concerned that their children can access these advanced sectors” (p. 31), constitutes the majority of the electorate or at least the decisive voting bloc in advanced democracies and, because it benefits from well-functioning markets, supports growth-enhancing policies and public goods that reinforce advanced capitalism. Moreover, the immobility of capital allows policy makers to establish a generous welfare state, which, in addition to having a redistributive dimension, operates as a provider of public goods (such as universal insurance policies that minimize the costs of job searches, maximize the health of the workforce, or lessen social conflict). There is much to learn and admire from the theoretical edifice of Democracy and Prosperity. It offers a plausible explanation for “the exceptional resilience of advanced capitalist democracies (in comparison to any other type of nation state in the last century or so)” (p. 4). At the same time, however, a deeper examination of the theory’s three main assumptions—the nature of complementary labor, the role and stability of cospecificity and colocation, and the majoritarian position of skilled individuals—leads one to question the claim that democracy reinforces rather than follows from capitalism and, more generally, the overall optimistic conclusion that capitalism and democracy are intrinsically compatible. First, Iversen and Soskice’s emphasis on capital–labor complementarity, which contradicts the conventional view that the interests of capital and labor clash with each other, is correct. Still, the type of labor that has been complementary to capital has evolved over time. Broadly speaking, it changed from artisans in preindustrial economies to unskilled workers in the first industrial revolution and then from semiskilled individuals during most of the twentieth century to highly skilled employees in the current knowledge economy. That evolution modified, in turn, employment patterns, wages, the distribution of income, capital’s incentives to invest in public goods, and, arguably, the political arena. By focusing its attention on the “virtuous” outcomes of the twentieth century (and, more tentatively at the end of the book, on today’s labor market), Democracy and Prosperity downplays important historical tensions between capitalism and democracy. For example, nineteenth-century capitalists opposed full suffrage, because of their concern about the condition and demands of labor. Likewise, today’s growing inequality and stagnant median incomes (Anthony Atkinson, Inequality, 2015; OECD, “Under Pressure: The Squeezed Middle Class,” 2019), which challenge the book’s thesis that society’s middle strata continue to be the winners of democratic capitalism, are feeding the rise of populism.
This chapter sets a particular thesis focused on the institutional structure of the American poli... more This chapter sets a particular thesis focused on the institutional structure of the American political system within the context of a broader literature in the comparative political economy of crime and punishment. It then considers three possible objections to this analysis. The first argues that increasing American exceptionalism in the postwar period is to be explained primarily in terms of a distinctive history and politics of race. The next is the argument that this exceptionalism is to be attributed primarily to national policy driven by the federal government. The final argument is that American exceptionalism is driven by the interests of political elites who are relatively disconnected from the interests of their electors. Each of these objections, the chapter suggests, can be met.
PROFESSOR Ahmad contends that money does not add to net wealth. For the government to be in equil... more PROFESSOR Ahmad contends that money does not add to net wealth. For the government to be in equilibrium 'the government's negative marginal return from the issue of bonds must equal the negative return (imputed) from the issue of money'. For the public to be in equilibrium the imputed marginal return of those to whom the money is issued is equal to their marginal return from bonds. Thus, if an asset is valued on the basis of its marginal return, the positive value to its holders of the money issued is equal to the negative value to the government of having issued the money: money, in other words, does not add to net wealth. The main purpose of this note is to suggest that Ahmad's arbitrary assumption that wealth should be valued on the basis of marginal return avoids the important question raised by Pesek and Saving [2] and by Patinkin [3], and leads to prima-facie unacceptable results; this is discussed in the next section. But even if Ahmad's assumption is accepted it is argued in Section 3 that his governmental equilibrium condition does not hold. It is not easy, however, to criticize Ahmad's arguments because of his incomplete specification of his model: why do people want to hold money, what are their objective functions, what is the government's objective function, what type of institution is the government, how does money get into the economy, and so on, are all relevant questions which Ahmad does not answer.
We present a theory of social policy preferences that emphasizes the composition of peopleOs skil... more We present a theory of social policy preferences that emphasizes the composition of peopleOs skills. The key to our argument is that individuals who have made risky investments in skills will demand insurance against the possible future loss of income from those investments. Because the transferability of skills is inversely related to their specificity, workers with specific skills face a potentially long spell of unemployment or a significant decline in income in the event of job loss. Workers deriving most of their income from specific skills therefore have strong incentives to support social policies that protect them against such uncertainty. This is not the case for general skills workers, for whom the costs of social protection weigh more prominently. We test the theory on public opinion data for eleven advanced democracies and suggest how differences in educational systems can help explain cross-national differences in the level of social protection.
... For further Discussion Papers by this author see: www.cepr.org/pubs/new-dps/dplist.asp?author... more ... For further Discussion Papers by this author see: www.cepr.org/pubs/new-dps/dplist.asp?authorid= 109050 * We are very grateful for comments and advice from Philip Arestis, Javier Lozano, Liam Graham, David Vines, and Simon Wren-Lewis. Submitted 15 August 2010 Page 4. ...
to be the world's leading centre for interdisciplinary research on inequalities and create real i... more to be the world's leading centre for interdisciplinary research on inequalities and create real impact through policy solutions that tackle the issue. The Institute provides a genuinely interdisciplinary forum unlike any other, bringing together expertise from across the School and drawing on the thinking of experts from every continent across the globe to produce high quality research and innovation in the field of inequalities.
The volume and quality of the scholarship generated of late on the question of the “varieties of ... more The volume and quality of the scholarship generated of late on the question of the “varieties of capitalism” has been truly outstanding. We now know far more than we ever did about the internal workings of particular national economies, and about the determinants of what Angus Maddison once termed the “proximate” causes of their competitive strengths and weaknesses. That knowledge has come in part from the work of a talented set of comparative political scientists and industrial sociologists, many of whom participate in this collection. It has also come from the work of a set of economists and economic historians with sufficient professional courage and intellectual integrity to operate at (or even beyond) the edge of their notoriously narrow and institutionally blind discipline. But because that knowledge has come from so many sources, and because so much of it has entered the public domain in the form of discrete case studies or collections of relatively disconnected essays, what ...
This paper deals with the German apprenticeship training system. We first set the scene by descri... more This paper deals with the German apprenticeship training system. We first set the scene by describing the operation of the system, including the statistical picture in terms of supply and demand and costs; the relationship between the vocational training and the educational systems; the complex of regulations which companies engaging in apprenticeship training have to respect; and the relevant institutions. We then focus on the question why many companies make substantial net investments in marketable skills. Two simple ideas are developed as at least partial and complementary explanations of company' behaviour. The first is that it is significantly more expensive to teach company - specific skills to externally hired workers with marketable skills. The second idea tries to capture the belief that companies have that the apprenticeship system is some sort of competiton which companies have to go in for if they are to receive the best school leavers.
Why are we in the entangled chaos in the advanced world, in particular in the US and UK? It is ar... more Why are we in the entangled chaos in the advanced world, in particular in the US and UK? It is argued that neo-liberalism is at the core of the explanation, but in a complex way. Some major «liberalizing» framework change was needed in the 1980s and 1990s to loosen the protective hold of large Fordist corporations and established financial institutions to enable the changes the ICT revolution held out to take place; this was Thatcher's strategy and bitterly opposed by much of the British capitalist elite. The paper focusses on the US (and the UK in minor key) as the driver of radical innovation. Over time major problematic pathologies have emerged in the neoliberal agenda. It is argued that these pathologies are responsible, directly and indirectly, for most of our contemporary problems: for deep segregation in British and American society, especially between large successful cities and smaller urban areas, between graduates and non-graduates, and in public services; in the grow...
We develop a general model of redistribution and use it to account for the remarkable variance in... more We develop a general model of redistribution and use it to account for the remarkable variance in government redistribution across democracies. We show that the electoral system plays a key role because it shapes the nature of political parties and the composition of governing coalitions, whether these are conceived as electoral alliances between classes or alliances between class parties. Our argument implies a) that center-left governments dominate under PR systems, while center-right governments dominate under majoritarian systems, and b) that PR systems redistribute more than majoritarian systems. We test our argument on panel data for redistribution, government partisanship, and electoral system in advanced democracies.
A central element of the argument of this book is the symbiosis between the interests of the skil... more A central element of the argument of this book is the symbiosis between the interests of the skilled, educated workforces of the advanced capitalist sectors and their support for the political maintenance and promotion of those sectors. This chapter examines how this argument works in the technological regime of Fordism. It outlines how differences in institutions shaped initial government responses to the end of Fordism and deindustrialization. Like other advanced technologies, Fordism represents a particular organization of location cospecific assets with wide-ranging consequences for both economic and political institutions. The chapter begins by explaining this organization. It then turns to the forces of change that ultimately upended the Fordist equilibrium, starting in the second half of the 1970s.
This chapter considers the “second-order” effects of the transition to the knowledge economy. Thi... more This chapter considers the “second-order” effects of the transition to the knowledge economy. This means the set of preferences, beliefs, and party allegiances that are crystallizing as a consequence of the political-economic realities brought about by the knowledge economy. Chapter 3 considered “first-order” effects—immediate policy responses reflecting existing political coalitions—and showed that these responses were relatively limited and in most countries, failed to offer much compensation for those who lost out in the collapse of the Fordist economy. This chapter argues that this failure has created the political conditions for the rise of populism. Populism refers to a set of preferences and beliefs that rejects established parties and elites, that sees established politicians as gaming the system to their own advantage, and that at the same time sees the poor as undeserving of government support.
Kreuzer regards these East European cases as "the most significant challenge" to our theory. Give... more Kreuzer regards these East European cases as "the most significant challenge" to our theory. Given his goal in adjudicating between our model and Boix's, it is less than even-handed of Kreuzer not to subject Boix's model to them. We did and found that Boix's model also collapses. Web Appendix for "Coevolution of Capitalism and Political Representation" May 2010 references. The cited book (Braunias, 1932) is on electoral laws, and says nothing about economic characteristics. 1. Kreuzer's objections to our Table 4 historical classifications.
Following the post-financial crisis recession, the UK and other high-income countries have experi... more Following the post-financial crisis recession, the UK and other high-income countries have experienced slow growth and stagnant productivity, along with both low inflation and, more recently, low unemployment. This column introduces an intuitive macroeconomic model that helps explain this puzzling combination.
This article elaborates a new framework for understanding how variations in national institutions... more This article elaborates a new framework for understanding how variations in national institutions structure economic policy and performance. Applying the new economics of organization to the macroeconomy, it argues that the core competencies of firms depend on their capacities to coordinate with other actors in five spheres of the economy. It explores the differences between liberal market economies where such coordination is achieved mainly by market mechanisms and coordinated market economies where strategic interaction is more central to coordination. The framework generates a theory of comparative institutional advantage which suggests that national institutional frameworks need not converge in the face of pressures from globalization because firms can exploit and will often offer political support for the distinctive institutional advantages present in their political economy. These comparative advantages support different types of innovation and are often characterized by the ...
The question of inequality has moved decisively to the top of the contemporary intellectual agend... more The question of inequality has moved decisively to the top of the contemporary intellectual agenda. Going beyond Thomas Piketty’s focus on wealth, increasing inequalities of various kinds, and their impact on social, political and economic life, now present themselves among the most urgent issues facing scholars in the humanities and the social sciences. Key among these is the relationship between inequality, crime and punishment. The propositions that social inequality shapes crime and punishment, and that crime and punishment themselves cause or exacerbate inequality, are conventional wisdom. Yet, paradoxically, they are also controversial. In this volume, historians, criminologists, lawyers, sociologists and political scientists come together to try to solve this paradox by unpacking these relationships in different contexts. The causal mechanisms underlying these correlations call for investigation by means of a sustained programme of research bringing different disciplines to b...
Contrary to the predictions of a long and distinguished literature, spanning from Marx on the Lef... more Contrary to the predictions of a long and distinguished literature, spanning from Marx on the Left through Polanyi and Schumpeter to Mill and Hayek on the Right, that saw democracy and capitalism as partially if not fully incompatible, democratic capitalism reigned unchallenged in the advanced world throughout most of the twentieth century. It did so, according to Democracy and Prosperity, Torben Iversen and David Soskice’s new, bold, and, overall, optimistic book, because democracy and capitalism are indeed “generally mutually supportive” (p. 5). Democracy “makes” (rather than replaces) markets (p. 258). In turn, a well-functioning capitalism, by delivering growth to an expanding middle class, makes democracy possible. According to Iversen and Soskice, that “symbiotic relationship” (p. xii) derives, in a nutshell, from the internal logic of both capitalism and democracy. On the one hand, advanced capitalism relies on the use of an educated labor force whose skills are “cospecific with other skilled workers, and ... with other relevant technology” (p. 14). To operate efficiently, firms and skilled individuals “colocate” together in regional clusters. “Cospecificity” and “colocation” then have two crucial consequences. First, both capital and skilled labor benefit from, and therefore demand, public goods—ranging from well-run bureaucracies to infrastructures and education—that generate those skills and reinforce the complementarity of factors. Second, capital is not footloose: firms, embedded in production clusters, are relatively immobile and hence deprived of Lindblom’s structural power to exit. On the other hand, skilled labor, which includes educated workers proper and “a wide aspirational community of families concerned that their children can access these advanced sectors” (p. 31), constitutes the majority of the electorate or at least the decisive voting bloc in advanced democracies and, because it benefits from well-functioning markets, supports growth-enhancing policies and public goods that reinforce advanced capitalism. Moreover, the immobility of capital allows policy makers to establish a generous welfare state, which, in addition to having a redistributive dimension, operates as a provider of public goods (such as universal insurance policies that minimize the costs of job searches, maximize the health of the workforce, or lessen social conflict). There is much to learn and admire from the theoretical edifice of Democracy and Prosperity. It offers a plausible explanation for “the exceptional resilience of advanced capitalist democracies (in comparison to any other type of nation state in the last century or so)” (p. 4). At the same time, however, a deeper examination of the theory’s three main assumptions—the nature of complementary labor, the role and stability of cospecificity and colocation, and the majoritarian position of skilled individuals—leads one to question the claim that democracy reinforces rather than follows from capitalism and, more generally, the overall optimistic conclusion that capitalism and democracy are intrinsically compatible. First, Iversen and Soskice’s emphasis on capital–labor complementarity, which contradicts the conventional view that the interests of capital and labor clash with each other, is correct. Still, the type of labor that has been complementary to capital has evolved over time. Broadly speaking, it changed from artisans in preindustrial economies to unskilled workers in the first industrial revolution and then from semiskilled individuals during most of the twentieth century to highly skilled employees in the current knowledge economy. That evolution modified, in turn, employment patterns, wages, the distribution of income, capital’s incentives to invest in public goods, and, arguably, the political arena. By focusing its attention on the “virtuous” outcomes of the twentieth century (and, more tentatively at the end of the book, on today’s labor market), Democracy and Prosperity downplays important historical tensions between capitalism and democracy. For example, nineteenth-century capitalists opposed full suffrage, because of their concern about the condition and demands of labor. Likewise, today’s growing inequality and stagnant median incomes (Anthony Atkinson, Inequality, 2015; OECD, “Under Pressure: The Squeezed Middle Class,” 2019), which challenge the book’s thesis that society’s middle strata continue to be the winners of democratic capitalism, are feeding the rise of populism.
This chapter sets a particular thesis focused on the institutional structure of the American poli... more This chapter sets a particular thesis focused on the institutional structure of the American political system within the context of a broader literature in the comparative political economy of crime and punishment. It then considers three possible objections to this analysis. The first argues that increasing American exceptionalism in the postwar period is to be explained primarily in terms of a distinctive history and politics of race. The next is the argument that this exceptionalism is to be attributed primarily to national policy driven by the federal government. The final argument is that American exceptionalism is driven by the interests of political elites who are relatively disconnected from the interests of their electors. Each of these objections, the chapter suggests, can be met.
PROFESSOR Ahmad contends that money does not add to net wealth. For the government to be in equil... more PROFESSOR Ahmad contends that money does not add to net wealth. For the government to be in equilibrium 'the government's negative marginal return from the issue of bonds must equal the negative return (imputed) from the issue of money'. For the public to be in equilibrium the imputed marginal return of those to whom the money is issued is equal to their marginal return from bonds. Thus, if an asset is valued on the basis of its marginal return, the positive value to its holders of the money issued is equal to the negative value to the government of having issued the money: money, in other words, does not add to net wealth. The main purpose of this note is to suggest that Ahmad's arbitrary assumption that wealth should be valued on the basis of marginal return avoids the important question raised by Pesek and Saving [2] and by Patinkin [3], and leads to prima-facie unacceptable results; this is discussed in the next section. But even if Ahmad's assumption is accepted it is argued in Section 3 that his governmental equilibrium condition does not hold. It is not easy, however, to criticize Ahmad's arguments because of his incomplete specification of his model: why do people want to hold money, what are their objective functions, what is the government's objective function, what type of institution is the government, how does money get into the economy, and so on, are all relevant questions which Ahmad does not answer.
We present a theory of social policy preferences that emphasizes the composition of peopleOs skil... more We present a theory of social policy preferences that emphasizes the composition of peopleOs skills. The key to our argument is that individuals who have made risky investments in skills will demand insurance against the possible future loss of income from those investments. Because the transferability of skills is inversely related to their specificity, workers with specific skills face a potentially long spell of unemployment or a significant decline in income in the event of job loss. Workers deriving most of their income from specific skills therefore have strong incentives to support social policies that protect them against such uncertainty. This is not the case for general skills workers, for whom the costs of social protection weigh more prominently. We test the theory on public opinion data for eleven advanced democracies and suggest how differences in educational systems can help explain cross-national differences in the level of social protection.
... For further Discussion Papers by this author see: www.cepr.org/pubs/new-dps/dplist.asp?author... more ... For further Discussion Papers by this author see: www.cepr.org/pubs/new-dps/dplist.asp?authorid= 109050 * We are very grateful for comments and advice from Philip Arestis, Javier Lozano, Liam Graham, David Vines, and Simon Wren-Lewis. Submitted 15 August 2010 Page 4. ...
to be the world's leading centre for interdisciplinary research on inequalities and create real i... more to be the world's leading centre for interdisciplinary research on inequalities and create real impact through policy solutions that tackle the issue. The Institute provides a genuinely interdisciplinary forum unlike any other, bringing together expertise from across the School and drawing on the thinking of experts from every continent across the globe to produce high quality research and innovation in the field of inequalities.
The volume and quality of the scholarship generated of late on the question of the “varieties of ... more The volume and quality of the scholarship generated of late on the question of the “varieties of capitalism” has been truly outstanding. We now know far more than we ever did about the internal workings of particular national economies, and about the determinants of what Angus Maddison once termed the “proximate” causes of their competitive strengths and weaknesses. That knowledge has come in part from the work of a talented set of comparative political scientists and industrial sociologists, many of whom participate in this collection. It has also come from the work of a set of economists and economic historians with sufficient professional courage and intellectual integrity to operate at (or even beyond) the edge of their notoriously narrow and institutionally blind discipline. But because that knowledge has come from so many sources, and because so much of it has entered the public domain in the form of discrete case studies or collections of relatively disconnected essays, what ...
This paper deals with the German apprenticeship training system. We first set the scene by descri... more This paper deals with the German apprenticeship training system. We first set the scene by describing the operation of the system, including the statistical picture in terms of supply and demand and costs; the relationship between the vocational training and the educational systems; the complex of regulations which companies engaging in apprenticeship training have to respect; and the relevant institutions. We then focus on the question why many companies make substantial net investments in marketable skills. Two simple ideas are developed as at least partial and complementary explanations of company' behaviour. The first is that it is significantly more expensive to teach company - specific skills to externally hired workers with marketable skills. The second idea tries to capture the belief that companies have that the apprenticeship system is some sort of competiton which companies have to go in for if they are to receive the best school leavers.
Why are we in the entangled chaos in the advanced world, in particular in the US and UK? It is ar... more Why are we in the entangled chaos in the advanced world, in particular in the US and UK? It is argued that neo-liberalism is at the core of the explanation, but in a complex way. Some major «liberalizing» framework change was needed in the 1980s and 1990s to loosen the protective hold of large Fordist corporations and established financial institutions to enable the changes the ICT revolution held out to take place; this was Thatcher's strategy and bitterly opposed by much of the British capitalist elite. The paper focusses on the US (and the UK in minor key) as the driver of radical innovation. Over time major problematic pathologies have emerged in the neoliberal agenda. It is argued that these pathologies are responsible, directly and indirectly, for most of our contemporary problems: for deep segregation in British and American society, especially between large successful cities and smaller urban areas, between graduates and non-graduates, and in public services; in the grow...
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