Over the past twenty years there has emerged a compelling new discourse on varieties of capitalism. That discourse has an appealing common sense which challenges the view there is no alternative to free market capitalism. The initial view had a microeconomic focus that made firms the fulcrum of analysis. It distinguished between liberal market and coordinated market economies. Subsequently, there has emerged a second-generation literature which adopts a macroeconomic perspective that...
Read More »Capitalism Alone Against Itself: Liberal Democratic versus Political Capitalism
I finished Branko Milanovic's thought provoking Capitalism Alone this summer. But I haven't had much time to write on the blog, as you might have noticed. This is certainly not a review, and I would definitely suggest that you go and buy the book as soon as you can and read it. It is a serious discussion of the future of capitalism, that word that, as Heilbroner often reminded us, was at the center of the discipline, but seldom discussed openly by economists. He cited, if memory doesn't fail...
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