Inequality and Prosperity: Social Europe Vs. Liberal America 1st Edition

by Jonas Pontusson (Author)

3 customer reviews

ISBN-13: 978-0801489709

ISBN-10: 0801489709

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What are the relative merits of the American and European socioeconomic systems? Long-standing debates have heated up in recent years with the expansion of the European Union and increasingly sharp political and cultural differences between the United States and Europe. In Inequality and Prosperity, Jonas Pontusson provides a comparative overview of the two major models of labor markets and welfare systems in the advanced industrial world: the "liberal capitalist" system of the United States and Britain and the "social market" capitalism of northern Europe. These two models balance concerns of efficiency and equity in fundamentally different ways. In the 1990s the much-heralded forces of globalization (together with demographic changes and attendant political pressures) seemed to threaten the very existence of the social-market economies of Europe. Were the social compacts of Sweden and Germany outmoded? Would varieties of capitalism remain possible, or were labor-market and social-welfare arrangements converging on the U.S. norm? Pontusson opposes the notion of inevitable convergence: he believes that social-market economies can survive and indeed flourish in the contemporary world economy. He bases his argument on an enormous amount of highly specialized research on eighteen countries, using national-level data for the last thirty years. Among the areas he explores are labor-market dynamics, income distribution, employment performance, wage bargaining, firm-level performance, and the changing possibilities for the welfare state.

Inequality and Prosperity: Social Europe Vs. Liberal America

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Product Details

Series: Cornell Studies in Political Economy
Paperback: 256 pages
Publisher: Cornell University Press; 1 edition (December 15, 2005)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0801489709
ISBN-13: 978-0801489709
Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 0.6 x 9.3 inches
Shipping Weight: 14.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #449,892 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #104 in Books > Business & Money > Economics > Income Inequality
- #191 in Books > Textbooks > Business & Finance > Economics > Macroeconomics
- #456 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > Public Affairs & Policy > Social Policy

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Best book on social democracy

By doug k on January 16, 2011

Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase

This is a terrific book, filled with relevant information and skilled analysis. A number of terms have been used to describe economies that mix capitalist with socialist features, e.g., mixed economy, welfare state, social democracy, Third Way, market socialism, social market economy. Jonas Pontusson in this book, Inequality and Prosperity, delineates two types of mixed economies and names them Social Market Economies (SMEs) and Liberal Market Economies (LMEs). His analysis and comparisons of these types is extremely useful for understanding the differences in mixed economies. (Nordic SMEs = Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden; Continental SMEs = Austria, Belgium, Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland; LMEs = Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, UK, US. Other countries are not categorized.)

"The SMEs are distinguished by densely organized business communities...coordinated business. Second, they are distinguished by strong unions and by highly institutionalized bargaining systems. Third, the social market economies are distinguished by extensive public provision of social welfare and employment protection. In the SMEs, worker participation in management decision making is prescribed by law...institutionalized economy-wide bargaining between unions and employers is a distinctive feature of the SMEs. Relative to the continental SMEs, the Nordic SMEs are distinguished by higher levels of union density, more universalistic welfare states, and greater reliance on the public sector (services) in the provision of social welfare." (p17)

Pontusson shows that SMEs are clearly superior in terms of more equitable income distribution and that economic performance is not inferior to the LMEs.Read more ›

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Social Europe vs. Liberal America

By Gderf on January 3, 2016

Format: Paperback

Subtitled Social Europe vs. Liberal America, this is an attempt to differentiate between social democracy and market capitalism, peculiarly termed liberal, in favor of the former. Pontusson contradicts himself from the start saying that conservative ideology has become predominant since 1970 while social government action has been surprising resilient. Where has he been, or has political control changed since he wrote? He's right to say that zero cost solutions have been ineffectual but more so have been the massive debt funded and misdirected social spending programs. The US is rich only in terms of government share of GDP, contradicted by the tabulations of disposable income. If per capita share of national debt is taken as seriously as deserved we are poor indeed. He omits the customary complaint of social democrats that we are under taxed. Clearly, he knows better.

He thinks that differences in approaches to social and economic policy are a driver of economic performance. Focus is on an assumed trade-off between growth and economic efficiency and social equality. He studies the roles of unions and worker representation, of banks and shareholders, and on skills, training and education as well as on the measurement of fiscal inputs and outputs and social and economic outcomes.

To identify three core features of the "social market economy": structures of corporate finance and governance, national level institutionalized collective bargaining, and extensive public social provision. There is a mass of statistical correlations in the form of scatter-plots to test a series of hypotheses about these relationships. My impression is that the statistical approach to these issues is only vaguely informative.Read more ›

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Good material for studying or thinking about the topic of Political economy

By Park Sanghun on April 11, 2015

Format: Paperback Verified Purchase

I'm satisfying with the contents of this book. This deals with some topics about "Political Economy"; inequality, wage, employment, some statial type of capitalism and so on. I'm reading the chapter 4, and it gives me quite insightful ideas.

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