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⁵ For introductions to and reviews of this large literature, see Helliwell, J. F., ‘Comparative Macroeconomics of Stagflation’, Journal of Economic Literature, 26 (1988), 1–28Google Scholar; Lawrence, R. Z. and Schultze, C. L., eds, Barriers to European Growth: A Transatlantic View (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1987)Google Scholar; Bean, C. R., Layard, P. R. G. and Nickell, S. J., ‘The Rise in Unemployment: A Multi-Country Study’, Economica (Supplement), 53 (1986), 1–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Johnson, G. E. and Layard, P. R. G., ‘The Natural Rate of Unemployment: Explanation and Policy’, chap. 16Google Scholar in Ashenfelter, O. C. and Layard, R., eds, Handbook of Labor Economics, vol. 2 (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1986)Google Scholar; Greenhalgh, C. A., Layard, P. R. G. and Oswald, A. J., eds, The Causes of Unemployment (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983).Google Scholar

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⁷ The exceptionally high rates of unemployment in many European countries have also been interpreted as a failure of European management systems, labour relations, capital market institutions and government policies to adapt from the Golden Age based on catch-up technologies and to move up to the technological frontiers of post-industrial society, involving automation and microprocessors. Competition from the newly industrializing countries has also been suggested as a cause of increasing unemployment in the OECD area.

⁸ For example, Grubb, D., Jackman, R. and Layard, R., ‘Causes of the Current Stagflation’, Review of Economic Studies, 49 (1982), 707–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Coe, D. T. and Gagliardi, J., ‘Nominal Wage Determination in Ten OECD Economies’, OECD, Economics and Statistics Department Working Papers (Paris: OECD, 1985)Google Scholar; Sachs, J. D., ‘Real Wages and Unemployment in the OECD Countries’, Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, 1 (1983), 255–304CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bruno, M. and Sachs, J. D., Economics of Worldwide Stagflation (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bruno, M., ‘Aggregate Supply and Demand Factors in OECD Unemployment: An Update’, Economica (Supplement), 53 (1986), 35–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar; OECD, Economic Outlook, No. 21 (1977), 61–4Google Scholar; OECD, Economies in Transition: Structural Adjustments in OECD Countries (Paris: OECD, 1989).Google Scholar

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¹⁰ The wage gap measure is illustrated in OECD, Economies in Transition, p. 35.Google Scholar Although this type of measure diners somewhat from the one originally developed by Bruno and Sachs, it has been used also by them (Bruno, and Sachs, , Economics of Worldwide Stagflation, pp. 229–30).Google Scholar Non-wage labour costs are not available for Australia, Denmark and New Zealand, but are known to be comparatively small in these countries.

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¹³ Examples of such factors are the search intensity of unemployed workers and the degree of mismatch between vacancies and the unemployed. In Britain, however, the degree of mismatch does not appear to have increased. See Layard, R., How to Beat Unemployment (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986)Google Scholar; Jackman, R. and Roper, S., ‘Structural Unemployment’, Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, 49 (1987), 9–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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¹⁷ For a discussion of causal and intentional explanations see Elster, J., Explaining Technical Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).Google Scholar

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²³ Weir, M., ‘Full Employment as a Political Issue in the United States’, Social Research, 54 (1987), 377–402.Google Scholar

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³⁸ Up to the early 1970s, relatively short industrial disputes with a wide participation (the shunto) were important in Japan.

³⁹ Scharpf, F., Sozialdemokratische Krisenpolitik in Europa (Frankfurt/New York: Campus, 1987).Google Scholar

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⁴¹ Between 1973 and 1978 the decrease of the immigrant proportion of the labour force amounted to roughly 1·5 per cent in Austria and somewhat above 2 per cent in Germany (cf. data in Scharpf, , Sozialdemokratische Krisenpolitik in Europa, p. 72).Google Scholar

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⁴⁴ For example, Crouch, C., ‘Conditions for Trade Union Wage Restraint’Google Scholar, in Lindberg, and Maier, , eds, The Politics of Inflation and Economic Stagnation: Theoretical Approaches and international Case Studies, pp. 105–39Google Scholar; Bruno, and Sachs, , Economics of Worldwide StagflationGoogle Scholar; Callum, J. M., ‘Unemployment in OECD Countries in the 1980s’, Economic Journal, 96 (1986), 942–60.Google Scholar For definitions of ‘neo-corporatism’ see, for example, Schmitter, P. C., ‘Interest Intermediation and Regime Governability in Contemporary Western Europe and North America’, in Berger, S., ed., Organizing interests in Western Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981)Google Scholar; Lehmbruch, G., ‘Concertation and the Structure of Corporatist Networks’, in Goldthorpe, J. H., ed., Order and Conflict in Contemporary Capitalism: Studies in the Political Economy of Western European Nations (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), pp. 60–80.Google Scholar For a discussion of the role of encompassing unions, cf. Olson, M., The Rise and Decline of Nations (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1982).Google Scholar

⁴⁵ For the historically informed, however, the recent use of the term corporatism to refer to broad, class-based collective action involving encompassing unions appears as a misnomer, which stands the original concept of corporatism on its head. Up to the Second World War the theory of corporatism was in fact used to counteract this type of broadly based collective action via encompassing unions and to hinder the organization of workers' interests on the basis of class. The classical corporatist model prescribed, instead, the creation of segmented, much more narrow bases for collective action and organization of workers' interests, primarily occupations (corporations) or the enterprise. Cf. Messner, , Die Soziale Frage im Blickfeld der Irrwege von Gestern, der Sozialkämpfe von Heute, der Weltentscheidung von Morgen.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Rank correlations between average unemployment levels in 1985–86 and ‘neo-corporatism’, according to Bruno and Sachs, Lehmbruch and Schmitter are –0.37, –0.29, and –0.60, respectively, while the corresponding correlations for increases in unemployment are –0.11, –0.14, and –0.33, respectively.

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⁴⁹ It is striking that in the early 1980s the Reagan administration was much more daring in its use of expansionary measures than the conservative governments in Germany and also in Britain, although the latter country did not suffer from the second oil shock. See Tobin, J., ‘Impasse of the 1980s: Locomotives who Can't or Won't’, The World Economy, 7 (1984), 5–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar