Aktion	Zweigstelle	Standorte	Status	Frist	Vorbestellungen
Vorbestellen	Zweigstelle: 07., Urban-Loritz-Pl. 2a	Standorte: GW.TE FS.E Pont / College 6x - Magazin: bitte wenden Sie sich an die Infotheke	Status: Verfügbar	Frist:	Vorbestellungen: 0

What are the relative merits of the American and European socioeconomic systems? Longstanding 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. (Verlagsinformation) / Book Review: "Pontusson, a distinguished political economist now at Princeton University, has done a very fine job of comparing the performances of the liberal market economies (in Ireland, the United Kingdom, and the United States) and the social market economies (in Austria, Germany, Switzerland, the Benelux countries, and the Nordic countries). With a wealth of statistics, he reaches conclusions that undermine many of the oversimplifications that have long encumbered debate. Pontusson shows that the social market model can mitigate the tradeoff between equality and efficiency. Several social market economies have had lower unemployment rates than the average for the liberal market economies, although job creation has been higher in the latter. The postwar welfare state has also, through cash payments and the provision of services, reduced relative and absolute poverty, and there is no evidence that it has undercut economic growth or lowered living standards. Pontusson recommends that European socialists and progressives consider liberalizing measures on employment protection, as long as such measures are accompanied by higher public income support for the unemployed and steps to improve their employability. Market liberals, he concludes, should not be allowed to "define the terms of the economic and social policy debate." (Book Review by Stanley Hoffmann in: Foreign affairs, Sept./Oct. 2006) /