This paper examines the role of institutional analysis within the field of international business (IB) studies. Within IB, institutions matter, but the view of institutions tends to be “thin”, utilizing summary indicators rather than detailed description, and thus approaches institutions as...

How can we determine when an existing institutional path or trajectory is ending and being replaced with a new one? How does such a process take place? How can we distinguish between institutional innovation within an existing trajectory and a switchover to a new trajectory or path? This paper...

The paper tests a quot;bifurcationquot; hypothesis that in much of Europe a relatively small number of firms have moved into a new institutional context, or quot;rules of the game,quot; that are largely common, international institutions and practices, while the large majority of firms continue...

For several years the German economy has been lambasted within and without for its economic quot;rigiditiesquot; and lack of dynamism. Accordingly, there has been no let-up in the proposals to get the German economy quot;on trackquot;. Since the early 1990s four institutional weaknesses have...

This article addresses the issue of how to explain institutional change in national political economies. Within an actor-centered institutionalist theoretical framework, it explores the utility of a coalitional explanation for changes in the financial and corporate governance systems of Italy....

We center this review article around six important books that represent recent thinking by political economists on global finance and discuss their substance, their implications, as well as some of their shortcomings, for our understanding of the subject. We organize our review around three...

As in many other nations, economic globalization undermined the economic policymaking autonomy of the German federal government. At the same time, it prompted decentralization of other kinds of economic policymaking authority within the federal system. Thus, the Länder have assumed increased...

This paper examines the role of the banking system in the German model of industrial development. It argues that banks continue to fulfil several of their traditional functions in industrial finance despite dramatic changes in financial regulation and the internationalisation of product and...