Varieties of Capitalism in History, Transition and Emergence : New Perspectives on Institutional Development

Building on the Varieties of Capitalism framework, this book brings together the tools and perspectives of institutional and agency economics. This has been achieved with historical and contemporary analyses of how institutions such as legal status, ownership transitions from public or collective ownership to private ownership, representational status in firms’ governance and wider business structures developed. It constructs institutional development histories across leading liberal capitalisms: Britain, Germany and Continental Europe, New World US capitalism, and contemporary transitions in China and Tanzania.

Economics tends to teach that developed countries have good institutions while developing countries do not, and that this is the factor that constrains the latter''s growth. However, the picture is far messier than this explanation suggests.

Building on the varieties of capitalism framework, this book brings together the tools of institutional economics with historical analyses of institutional evolution of different kinds of property rights and legal systems, protected by different kinds of state, giving rise to distinct corporate governance structures. It constructs institutional development histories across leading liberal capitalisms in Britain and the United States, compared with continental capitalisms in France and Germany, and contemporary transitional capitalisms in China and Tanzania. This volume is innovative in combining both historical and economic insights, and in combining developed country with developing country institutional emergence, dispelling the prevailing sense of complacency about the inevitability of the path of institutional development for the developed areas of the world and the paths that developing countries are likely to follow.

This volume will be of great importance to those who study international economics, development economics and international business.