ABSTRACT
How and why do countries differ in their economic policies? To what extent do specific institutional contexts generate local variations of globally disseminating policies? Both sociologists and economists have investigated this area of research. In this chapter, we analyse privatization policies of the steel industry in three countries: Argentina, Italy and Spain. Using an unconventional approach based on computer simulation, we explore the pattern-matching of different models of policy-making in different countries (for example, in which country did a specific policy-making model best match observed patterns) and we scrutinize the differences in pattern-matching in the countries under consideration.
