Rival Capitalists: Death in a Sicilian Landscape

by Jeffrey A. Hart

Book Overview

Great Britain, France, Germany, and Japan. Surveying the development of the steel, automobile, and semiconductor industries in each of these countries, Jeffrey A. Hart illuminates the role of national policy in a changing world.

Hart describes the global structure of production and consumption in the five major capitalist countries and offers a rich comparative history of their industrial policymaking. He concludes that variations in statesocietal...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0801499496
• ISBN13: 9780801499494
• Release Date: November 1992
• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Length: 328 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.1" x 9.3"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Author's Review of Rival Capitalists

This book is about the factors that explain changes in international competitiveness between 1945 and the late 1980s in three industries -- steel, automobiles, and semiconductors -- in five countries: the United States, Japan, Britain, France, and Germany. It argues that the way in which countries organize themselves internally is the most important factor. Increases in competitiveness occurred in countries like Germany and Japan where there was cooperation between business and the state or between business and labor. Declines in competitiveness occurred in countries like the US and Britain where government, business or labor were dominant in the overall system and therefore did not cooperate with each other. The book argues further that increases in competitiveness occur in countries where the diffusion of new knowledge and technology is rapid and that such diffusion is easier in countries where business, government, and labor are able to work together.