Neoliberalism and patterns of economic performance: 1980 to 2000

Cohen, Joseph N. and Centeno, Miguel A. (2006): Neoliberalism and patterns of economic performance: 1980 to 2000. Published in: Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science No. 606 (July 2006): pp. 32-67.

Abstract

Neoliberal discourse often produces the impression that the world has undergone a wholesale shift toward laissez-faire and that this shift has produced economic prosperity. This article examines national economic data to discern the degree to which (1) governments have in fact retreated from the market and (2) countries have enjoyed increasing economic prosperity over a period in which they have supposedly been liberalizing. The evidence is mixed on both counts. Although international capital mobility and trade liberalism appears to have grown over the past two decades, there is little evidence of a broad scaling back of governments. Over the same period, countries have not experienced any appreciable improvement in growth, cross-national equality, employment, or national debt loads, although there is some evidence of improved price stability near the end of the 1990s.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: trade; neoliberalism; structural adjustment; Latin America; economy; transfers; budget; spending
• Subjects: N - Economic History > N1 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics ; Industrial Structure ; Growth ; Fluctuations; H - Public Economics > H1 - Structure and Scope of Government; O - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth > O2 - Development Planning and Policy; P - Economic Systems > P1 - Capitalist Systems

References

Arrighi, Giovanni. 1994. The Long Twentieth Century. London: Verso.

Bendix, Reinhard. 1956. Work and Authority in Industry: Ideologies of Management in the Course of Industrialization. New York: John Wiley and Sons.

Block, Fred L. 1977. The Origins of International Economic Disorder: A Study of United States International Monetary Policy from World War II to the Present. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Brohman, John. 1996. "Postwar Development in the Asian NICs: Does the Neoliberal Model Fit Reality?" Economic Geography 72:107 - 130.

Bruton, Henry 1998. “A Reconsideration of Import Substitution” Journal of Economic Literature 36 (2): 903 – 936.

Bruno, Michael, and Jeffrey Sachs. 1985. Economics of Worldwide Stagflation. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Campbell, John L., and Ove K. Pedersen. 2001. "The Rise of Neoliberalism and Institutional Analysis." Pp. 1 - 24 in John L. Campbell and Ove K. Pedersen, eds., The Rise of Neoliberalism and Institutional Analysis. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Crouzet, Franðcois. 2001. A History of the European Economy, 1000-2000. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia.

Dobbin, Frank. 1993. "The Social Construction of the Great Depression: Industrial Policy during the 1930s in the United States." Theory and Society 22:1-56.

Dombrowski, Peter. 1998. "Haute Finance and High Theory: Recent Scholarship on Global Financial Relations." International Studies Quarterly 42:1 - 28.

Esping-Andersen, Gosta. 1990. The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.

Evans, Peter B. 1995. Embedded Autonomy: States and Industrial Transformation. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Firebaugh, Glenn. 1999. "Empirics of World Income Inequality." American Journal of Sociology 103:1597-1630.

Fligstein, Neil. 1990. The Transformation of Corporate Control. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Fourcade-Gourinchas, Marion, and Sarah L. Babb. 2002. "The Rebirth of the Liberal Creed: Paths to Neoliberalism in Four Countries." American Journal of Sociology 108:533 - 579.

Hobsbawm, Eric J. 1994. The Age of Extremes: A History of the World, 1914-1991. New York: Pantheon Books.

Kiser, Edgar, and Andrew Matthew Laing. 2001. "Have We Overestimated the Effects of Neoliberalism and Globalization? Some Speculations on the Anomalous Stability of Taxes on Business." Pp. 51 - 68 in John L. Campbell and Ove K. Pedersen, eds., The Rise of Neoliberalism and Institutional Analysis. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Manza, Jeff. 2000. "Political Sociological Models of the New Deal." Annual Review of Sociology 26:297 - 322.

Meyer, John W., John Boli, George M. Thomas, and Francisco Ramirez. 1997. "World Society and the Nation-State." American Journal of Sociology 103:144-81.

Ó Riain, Seán. 2000. "States and Markets in An Era of Globalization." Annual Review of Sociology 26:187 - 213.

Olson, Mancur. 1982. The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation and Social Rigidities. New Haven: Yale University Press. Portes, Alejandro. 1997. "Neoliberalism and the Sociology of Development: Emerging Trends and Unanticipated Facts." Population and Development Review 23:229-59. Privatisation International. 1998. Privatisation International 123: 4

Rodrik, Dani 1996. “Understanding Economic Policy Reform” Journal of Economic Literature 34: 9 – 41.

Ruggie, John G. 1982. "International Regimes, Transaction and Change: Embedded Liberalism in the Post-War Economic Order." International Organization 36:379 - 415.

Sachs, Jeffrey, ed. 1989a. Developing Country Debt and the World Economy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Sachs, Jeffrey. 1989b. "Introduction." Pp. 1 - 37 int Jeffrey Sachs, ed, Developing Country Debt and the World Economy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Stiglitz, Joseph. 2002. Globalization and its Discontents. New York: Norton.

Weir, Margaret, and Theda Skocpol. 1985. "State Structures and the Possibilities for ‘Keynesian’ Responses to the Great Depression in Sweden, Britain and the United States." Pp. 107 - 168 in Peter B. Evans, Dietrich Rueschesmeyer, and Theda Skocpol, eds., Bringing the State Back In. New York: Cambridge.

Western, Bruce. 1997. Between Class and Market: Postwar Unionization in the Capitalist Democracies. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Yergin, Daniel, and Joseph Stanislaw. 2002. The Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy. New York: Simon & Schuster.