Product Description: This collection of papers reflects the variety of interpretations and definitions connected with the concept of `mercantilism' which have evolved historically during the last two centuries. They range from interpretations of `mercantilistic' ideas to interpretations of policies...read more

Product Description: The EU's stated objective to make Europe ‘the most competitive and knowledge-based economy in the world capable of sustainable growth and better jobs and greater social cohesion’ has led to an increased focus on the area of vocational education and training...read more

Product Description: When Europe was Western Europe and socially rather cohesive, the question of economic integration through free market exchanges for labour, commodities and services was not a major problem. The integration of markets was hardly recognised as a real threat to social cohesion...read more

The aim of this book is to explore and reflect upon preconditions of a specific European social dimension, or more specifically of a European social citizenship. Welfare and social policies in Europe are deeply entrenched in state histories; the success of the welfare state stems from its ability during a fairly long historical period to unify social citizenship, full employment, mass education and a functional industrial relations system. The historical connection between welfare regimes built upon the nation state, and popular democracy founded in party voting, makes the deepening and widening of a common European project a highly risky undertaking and an open process with a radically uncertain outcome. The dilemma in the form of uneasy relationships among national welfare regimes and the evolutionary process of increased market integration – driven both by market forces (globalisation) and the European Union as a political project – is well known and has been demonstrated by different commentators. Every step of deepening market integration in Europe tends to threaten and put pressure on the existing national welfare regimes. As their own populations generally support them, the legitimacy of the EU is at risk. The book analyses the prospects of a coordinated social dimension at the European level, matching the market integration, and what role the concept of citizenship can play in such a scenario.

In the nineteenth century Adam Smith and others gradually invented a 'tradition' of free trade. This was a towering achievement and has proved to be influential to this day. This book examines this construction of the free trade tradition.Showing how historical contruction is a vital component in the writing of doctrinal history, Lars Magnusson argues that it is important for historians of economic thought to distance themselves from the practice of writing history backwards. Contrasting what occurred in Britain in the nineteenth century with what occurred in the United States and in Sweden, this book shows that perhaps the classical tradition meant something else entirely in different national contexts.This original and thought-provoking book is written such that it will be of great interest not only to historians specializing in economic thought, but also historians with other areas of interest.

Represents the attempt to provide a comprehensive treatment of Sweden's economic development since the middle of the 18th century. This book traces the industrialisation, the political currents and the social ambitions, that transformed Sweden from a backward agrarian economy into what is regarded by many as a model welfare state.

Product Description: Evolutionary Economics and Path Dependence presents important new theoretical and empirical work on economic change, learning processes, institutional change, choice and path dependency. The theoretical section includes discussion of the microfoundations of path dependency, path dependency in industrial networks, path dependence and the theory of the firm, lock-in effects in relation to professional organizations, the notion of bricolage in relation to path dependency and new and neo-institutional perspectives on the theory of the firm...read more