Books reviewed in this article: Peter A. Hall and David Soskice (eds.), Varieties of Capitalism: The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage Robert E. Goodwin, Bruce Headey, Ruud Muffels and Henk-Jan Dirven, The Real Worlds of Welfare Capitalism Francine D. Blau and Lawrence M. Kahn,...

Between 1980 and 1985, the French economy and industry faced a dramatic crisis; in the ten years that followed, it witnessed a remarkable revival. How did the French economy make this transition? While the state is still an important economic agent in France, and the market certainly has become...

Peter Hall and David Soskice's Varieties of Capitalism has become a seminal text and reference point across the social sciences, generating debate and research around political-economic models. Here, Bob Hancke presents the key readings on 'Varieties of Capitalism', including the original Hall...

Since the early 1990s, Europe's economies have been facing several new challenges: the single market programme, the collapse of the Berlin wall and eastward enlargement, and monetary unification. Building on the influential Varieties of Capitalism (VoC) perspective, first elaboarted in detail in...

Conventional images of the French political economy portray a country stuck in a regressive dynamic, which hinders the construction of competitive industries. Recent developments question this interpretation of the French production regime: labour productivity and corporate profitability are...

This book examines the crisis of EMU through the lenses of comparative political economy. It retraces the development of wage-setting systems in the core and peripheral EMU member states, and how these contributed to the increasing divergence between creditor and debtor states in the late 2000s....

What explains the shift from the moderate to high inflation rates of the Golden Age of post-war capitalism to the low inflation regime of monetarism in the 1970s and 1980s? Conventional views emphasise the rise of monetarism as a new economic paradigm that convinced policy makers to delegate...

When does industrial policy succeed and fail? While most approaches to these questions concentrate on policy design and state power, we draw attention to the historical legacies, industrial structures, and institutional arrangements that shape industrial policy outcomes. Using insights from...

Books reviewed: Wade Jacoby, Imitation and Politics: Redesigning Modern Germany Bernhard Ebbinghaus and Jelle Visser, (eds.) Trade Unions in Western Europe since 1945 Jeremy Waddington and Reiner Hoffman, (eds.) Trade Unions in Europe: Facing Challenges and Searching for Solutions Martyn Wright,...