The European Economy Since 1945: Coordinated Capitalism and Beyond

摘要

For over a decade, a staple of courses on European economic history has been Barry Eichengreen's contribution to the very influential CEPR volume on Economic Growth in Europe Since 1945, edited by Nick Crafts and Gianni Toniolo (1996). In that chapter, Eichengreen (1996) attributed the European postwar growth miracle to a set of interlocking institutions, both domestic and international. On the domestic front, corporatism locked labour and capital into a mutually beneficial bargain, whereby labour agreed to wage restraint in return for a commitment on the part of capital to invest the resultant profits, rather than paying them out as dividends. Internationally, institutions such as the European Payments Union, and later the EEC, promoted the liberalisation of intra-European trade, which was essential in order to guarantee firms access to foreign markets.