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241. Wage Coordination and the Welfare State: Germany and Japan Compared

Author:
Philip Manow
Publication Date:
12-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies
Abstract:
Is there a relation between welfare state regimes and national wage setting systems? Peter Swenson in his research on the historical dynamics of the US-American and Swedish welfare state has recently claimed that such a relation does indeed exist. The essay aims to check if this also holds true for the German and Japanese case. In the post-war period both countries have established systems of wage-bargaining that are less centralized than the Swedish system, but in which wages are highly coordinated both within and across sectors, and, subsequently, in which wage compression is relatively high as well. Thus, both countries are confronted with the same problems of wage- and welfare-drift and of firms' exit from the 'solidaristic' or coordinated wage setting that are so typical for Sweden. At the same time the German and Japanese welfare state differ from each other in almost all dimensions. Thus, both cases seem to be ideally suited to provide for a plausibility-check of the Swenson hypothesis. The essay reaches the conclusion that there is indeed ample evidence that both the German and the Japanese welfare state contributed critically to the stability of wage coordination in the era of high growth after World War II. They thus have to be understood as an integral part of the German and Japanese post-war growth model.
Topic:
Economics, Human Welfare, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States, Japan, America, and Germany

242. The Asian Economic Crisis

Author:
Linda Y.C. Lim, Frank Ching, and Bernardo M. Villegas
Publication Date:
02-1999
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Asia Society
Abstract:
The ongoing Asian economic crisis that began in mid-1997 ranks as Asia's second biggest event in since world war ii. the crisis abruptly halted the region's unprecedented three decades of rapid economic growth. It has also had wider global repercussions-not only in terms of its effects on non-Asian economies but also its implications for established canons of Western economic theory and policy-making, particularly with respect to exchange rate management and open capital markets. Many noted American economists and international capital market actors now publicly disagree on these matters.
Topic:
Economics
Political Geography:
America and Asia

243. Economic Stability and the World Economy

Author:
Gordon Brown
Publication Date:
09-1999
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Council on Foreign Relations
Abstract:
Only a year ago, an increasingly turbulent and inadequately supervised financial system threatened global instability.Since the height of the financial instability last september, the world has taken rapid and decisive action and the world has started to put in place new long term disciplines to promote greater stability.
Topic:
Economics, International Cooperation, and International Political Economy
Political Geography:
United Kingdom, America, and Europe

244. States, Scarcity, and Civil Strife in the Developing World

Author:
Colin Kahl
Publication Date:
04-1999
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies
Abstract:
Since the early 1990s, the National Security Strategy (NSS) of the United States has identified civil strife in developing countries as an important threat to American interests and pointed to demographic and environmental pressures as potential sources of these conflicts. As the Clinton administration's 1996 NSS notes, “America's security imperatives... have fundamentally changed. The central security challenge of the past half century—the threat of communist expansion—is gone. The dangers we face today are more diverse... [L]arge-scale environmental degradation, exacerbated by rapid population growth, threatens to undermine political stability in many countries and regions.”President Clinton echoed these sentiments in a speech before the United Nations on June 26, 1997, declaring that efforts to preserve the planet's natural resources were “crucial not only for the quality of our individual environments and health, but also to maintain stability and peace within nations and among them.” Similar concerns have been voiced outside Washington. In 1991, for example, then NATO secretary general Manfred Worner argued that “[t]he immense conflict potential building up in the Third World, characterized by growing wealth differentials, an exploding demography, climate shifts and the prospect for environmental disaster, combined with the resource conflicts of the future, cannot be left out of our security calculations...”And, in an influential and particularly apocalyptic article entitled “The Coming Anarchy,” Robert Kaplan went so far as to suggest that the environment was “the national-security issue of the early twenty-first century. The political and strategic impact of surging population, spreading disease, deforestation and soil erosion, water depletion, air pollution, and, possibly, rising sea levels in critical, overcrowded regions... will be the core foreign-policy challenge from which most others will ultimately emanate...”
Topic:
Security, Economics, Environment, International Political Economy, and Third World
Political Geography:
United States, America, and Washington

245. Science, Technology, and the Law

Author:
Peter Huber, Susan Raymond, Rodney W. Nichols, Kenneth Dam, Kenneth R. Foster, George Ehrlich, Debra Miller, Alan Charles Raul, Ronald Bailey, and Alex Kozinski
Publication Date:
08-1998
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
New York Academy of Sciences
Abstract:
As science and technology push the edges of understanding, innovation makes the once unimaginable merely quotidian. The flow—the torrent—of change inevitably meets the stock of laws and regulations that structure society. And, often, the legal system and the judiciary must cope with the resulting swirls, eddies, and, at times, whirlpools of ethical controversy and economic and societal choice.
Topic:
Economics, Government, International Law, and Science and Technology
Political Geography:
United States, New York, and America

246. Third Party Arms Transfers: Requirements for the 21st Century

Author:
John D. Macomber and Charles McC. Mathias
Publication Date:
10-1998
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Atlantic Council
Abstract:
Can the United States collaborate with foreign nations in armaments development and production without jeopardizing US national security? This question - in light of America's global security obligations - demands a satisfactory answer. The economic and political advantages of greater international cooperation are significant. Benefits from cooperation include improved interoperability of weapons and equipment used by US allies and partners in operations with the United States, reduction in production costs, and preservation of a defense industrial base among US allies. Yet, considerations of national security are equally cogent.
Topic:
Security, Foreign Policy, and Economics
Political Geography:
United States and America

247. Strategic Images: Perceptions of Russia in the USA and of America in Russia

Author:
Dag Hartelius and Natasha Randall
Publication Date:
11-1998
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
EastWest Institute
Abstract:
Over the last year we have witnessed a deteriorating climate in Russian-Western relations - or at least this has been the perception. The Russian financial crisis has accelerated the trend in Russia to blame the West - in particular the US - for their troubles. In America and Europe a new debate has been spawned on what kind of Russia we are now dealing with. Old truths, or old perceptions, are being questioned and relations are being reassessed.
Topic:
International Relations and Economics
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, America, Europe, and Asia

248. Health Challenges for the 21st Century

Author:
Joshua Lederberg, Margaret Hamburg, Stephen Morse, Philip R. Reilly, and Timothy Wirth
Publication Date:
02-1997
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
New York Academy of Sciences
Abstract:
A crisis usually eliminates the time required to focus on the long-term: The urgent tends to drive out the important. Over the past several years, public policy perspectives on health care have often suffered from such myopia. In the United States, and in many other countries around the world, spiraling costs and shrinking budgets have focused health policy attention on perceived near-term crises over the allocation of (often public) resources. Because public resource allocation involves tax dollars, and because voters feel personally affected by changes in health services, the controversy enters the political arena. Moreover, politics itself is a very near-term business, with the ballot box and polling data providing its primary compass. In turn, this has added to the tendency to think of health care challenges in terms of immediate needs and to focus on the moment rather than on the consequences of today's changes in tomorrow's complex patterns.
Topic:
Economics, Government, and Science and Technology
Political Geography:
United States and America

249. Trading Places: The Caribbean Faces Europe and the Americas in the Twenty-first Century

Author:
Anthony T. Bryan
Publication Date:
06-1997
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The North-South Center, University of Miami
Abstract:
The challenges confronting the Caribbean with respect to trade with Europe and the Americas are essentially similar: the future of existing regimes of significant preferences, the need to plan for the long term without such preferences, and the development of a strategy to meet the transition. Unfortunately, the dialogue on these matters often has been characterized as a protocol for the Caribbean to “choose between friends.” Growth in the economies of the Caribbean will depend to a large extent on participation in or access to global trade arrangements. Ideally, a Caribbean strategy for participation should involve simultaneous access to as many pacts as possible. This paper is an overview of the legacy and the future of trade relations between the Caribbean and Europe, and between the Caribbean and the Americas, as these relationships constitute the Caribbean's most urgent global agenda.
Topic:
Economics, Emerging Markets, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States, America, Europe, and Caribbean

250. Interest Groups in American Politics: Conceptual Elements and Key Literature

Author:
Miguel Angel Valverde
Publication Date:
01-1997
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas
Abstract:
The objective of this paper is to discuss some concepts and review relevant literature on interest groups in the United States, in order to provide a broad guide to the study of the topic. It aims to explore the main questions raised by their presence in the political arena as well as suggest some themes for future research.
Topic:
International Relations, Economics, and Politics
Political Geography:
United States and America