Perché variano i tassi di disoccupazione: economia e istituzioni nei paesi industriali avanzati

Macro-Corporatist theory provided important insights into successful economic performance in the 1960s and 1970s. But it has become clear, as the 1980s have proceeded, that it no longer captures the key elements which enable modern economies to perform successfully. The emphasis instead today is on policies and institutions which promote the innovation and rapid adjustment demanded by increasingly competitive world markets. This has led influential commentators to advocate deregulated markets, in which individual agents are minimally constrained. A careful look at how industrialised countries function in the present decade does indeed downplay the role of macro-corporatist theory, but it rejects the «Eurosclerosis-like» analysis. The institutional structures of the successful economies are at micro and macro levels. They include wage restraint. As important they cover institutions such as educational and vocational training systems, export marketing, research and development and finance; internal organisation of companies and the interrelation of companies; representation of both business and employees; and commonly shared conventions and understandings about behaviour. This paper has two goals. First, to give some idea of how coordinated market economies function and why this enables them to be successful in the world of the 1980s. This first goal is set within the answer to the second, which is to explain the pattern of unemployment across advanced industrialised countries in the 1980s.