ABSTRACT
The case studies covers the period from the 1970s to the subprime crisis which broke out in 2007 and led to a worldwide recession in 2009. The case studies in the selected countries show how the regulated type of capitalism which had developed after the Great Depression in the 1930s and dominated western countries in the 1950s and 1960s broke down and paved the way for the Neoliberal Globalisation model which has been developing ever since. As cases we have selected the four largest capitalist countries with respect to GDP: the United States, Japan, Germany and United Kingdom. But the size of the countries was not the only criteria. The countries apply different versions of the Neoliberal Globalisation model which developed in different and distinctive ways. In the United States and Great Britain it is fair to speak of a conservative revolution. Conservative governments with a vision of a radical liberal type of capitalism came into power and changed the structures of the economy. Of course there was an interaction between Ordungspolitik, macroeconomic policies and economic development. Structural changes led to a certain economic development which by itself triggered structural changes. Germany and Japan were latecomers, establishing the deregulated type of capitalism relatively reluctantly at first and also quite late. Within this deregulated type of capitalism, which has been developing since the 1970s, there are different versions. For example, the United States and United Kingdom followed a much more finance-driven development than Germany and Japan. The latter two deregulated their financial systems but, in contrast to the United States and UK, without triggering a domestic expansion. Japan and Germany followed aggressive export-led growth strategies and continued the tradition which brought them spectacular economic miracles in the decades immediately after the Second World War. However, this export orientation produced lower GDP-growth rates than in the US and UK. Germany also gives the chance to analyse problems within the EMU. In short, the four countries (US, UK, Japan and Germany) stand for four unique versions of the deregulated type of capitalism and are characterised by different macroeconomic policy regimes. In each of the case studies below we first give a short overview of the country’s economic and political development. Then, in much more detail we shall
discuss developments in the financial sector, the country’s embeddedness in the global market, its wage policy and wage development, monetary policy and finally we offer an overall interpretation of each macroeconomic policy regime and its dynamics.
