Throughout the period 1871-1938, the average British worker was better off than the average German worker, but there were significant differences between major sectors. For the aggregate economy, the real wage gap was about the same as the labour productivity gap, but again there were important...

It is a central claim of the national competitiveness literature that firms exploit the comparative advantages of their environment by choosing to pursue the product market strategy that is facilitated by national financial- and labour-market institutions. Otherwise, so goes the argument, firms...