Varieties Of Capitalism And New Institutional Deals

‘This collection of essays goes well beyond the technical exercises that have become standard in complexity modeling and brings to life in a very accessible and pragmatic way economists’ growing concern with contingency, institutions, history, variety, information, power and policy. This is an important book for those interested in the likely future direction of economic methodology and policy modeling.’
– William Milberg, New School for Social Research, New York, US

‘All too often, orthodox economics presumes economic laws to be timeless and universal, while paying scant attention to real world institutions. Wolfram Elsner and Hardy Hanappi have assembled seventeen papers by a diverse international collection of recognized scholars and rising stars that dispense with the cookie-cutter approach and get down to the important work of identifying the institutional and cultural specificities that characterize capitalism in the 21st century. Successful policies for real development depend crucially on the kinds of analyses found in this most welcome volume.’
– Mathew Forstater, University of Missouri-Kansas City, US

In response to global and technological challenges, this important book highlights the continuing diversity of national institutional reconfigurations and policy reforms from an institutional economics perspective. The distinguished contributors offer a fresh and critical appraisal of three interconnected fields of research; varieties of capitalism, the new economy and new institutional deals. They discuss comparative institutional systems, institutional state and policy reform strategies, and the further development of evolutionary-institutional economic theory.

This work illustrates that capitalist market economies remain persistently diverse, in spite of similar global, technological, informational, and organisational challenges. The complex character of socio-economies thus has come to the fore and, the contributors argue, causes path-dependent, open-ended and diverse reconfigurations. Dual typologies of ‘market-led’ vs. ‘coordinated’ economies, therefore, seem to be too general to reflect these different patterns. Also, diverse firms’ forms, particularly MNEs as international cultural diffusion mechanisms, and ‘empire’ type systems are explored.

This book will undoubtedly become a benchmark for the analysis of comparative institutional systems. Its appeal will be to heterodox, institutional and evolutionary economists as well as practitioners interested in policy and institutional reforms.

Contents:

Introduction and Overview
Wolfram Elsner and Hardy Hanappi

PART I: VARIETIES OF CAPITALISM, VARIETIES OF THE GLOBAL FIRM AND VARIETIES OF REGULATION
1. Varieties of Capitalism: Theoretical Critique and Empirical
Observations
Stefan Kesting and Klaus Nielsen

2. State Formation and the Construction and Maintenance of Institutions
for Economic Growth in the West and the East, 1415–1846
Patrick O’Brien

3. Contemporary Capitalisms and Internationalisation: From One
Diversity to Another
Charlie Dannreuther and Pascal Petit

4. Towards an Historically Relevant Economics of the Firm
Michael Dietrich and Jackie Krafft

5. The Export of Varieties of Capitalism: The Cases of Wal-Mart and
IKEA
Sue Konzelmann, Frank Wilkinson, Charles Craypo and Rabih Aridi

6. Modern Economic Predation: War, Corporate Fraud and the Cruel
Chimera of Labour Market Reform
James K. Galbraith

7. A New Global Military–Terrorism–Hegemony Social Structure of
Accumulation For Long–Wave Upswing?
Phillip Anthony O’Hara

PART II: THE (WELFARE) STATE, THE NEW ECONOMY AND NEW INSTITUTIONAL DEALS
8. New Deals of New Social Entities. Evolution of Old Friends: Workers – Firms – Classes – States
Michael Scheibenreif and Hardy Hanappi

9. The Death of the Family? Evolution of a New Deal Between Biological
and Social Reproduction
Hardy Hanappi and Edeltraud Hanappi-Egger

10. Small Businesses – The Solution For What and For Whom? Elisabeth Sundin

11. Building on the Micro–Meso–Macro Evolutionary Framework: The
Stakes for the Analysis of Clusters of Innovation
Olivier Brette and Caroline Mehier

12. The New Economy, Innovation Policies, and the Role of Organised
Labour
Frank Gerlach

13. Social Innovation Between Local and Global
Frank Moulaert and Jacques Nussbaumer

PART III: AN ECONOMICS FOR A NEW ECONOMY?
14. A New Economics of Complementarity, Increasing Returns and
Planning Horizons
Frederic B. Jennings

15. Taking Economics to Bed: About the Pitfalls and Possibilities of
Cultural Economics
Robbert Maseland

16. Almost Everything You Would Like to Know About Technology and
Growth and You Will Never Be Told By Neo-Schumpeterians
George Liagouras

17. Economics Remains the Same – Or Does It? Challenges of the New
Economy
Jorma Sappinen and Kalevi Kyläheiko

Index