The Distribution of Income and Wealth in Ireland

Ensuring a fair and efficient distribution of economic resources in society is one of the most important public policy challenges facing democratic governments. This chapter notes how the emergence of new and better data on the composition and distribution of income and wealth has heightened interest in economic inequality. Data on the distribution of both income and wealth are presented, highlighting how Ireland, as a liberal market economy, has high levels of direct market income inequality but the welfare state plays a significant role in redistribution. The provision of robust wealth data is a recent phenomenon for Ireland, one absent from our understanding of living standards, well-being, and redistributive public policies for some time. Wealth is more unequally distributed than income, and it is notably concentrated in housing capital. The chapter concludes by highlighting the relevance and potential of these new insights.

The Impacts of Oil Prices, Exchange Rate and COVID-19 Pandemic on BIST Petrochemical Market

Stock markets are developing with the economic growth of the countries in a liberal market economy. Petrochemicals is an indicator of the performance of the country's industry with high inter-industry linkage by providing input to several sectors, producing various outputs with a certain number of raw materials. The COVID-19 pandemic period has affected all markets worldwide and caused fluctuations in the index values of large firms in the petrochemical industry in Borsa Istanbul (BIST). This study analyzes the impact of the pandemic period and change in the oil prices and exchange rate on the petrochemical market in Turkey. The monthly data of petrochemical stock market index, exchange rate, oil prices are used in this time series analysis. A pandemic information index representing the COVID-19 pandemic was derived and included in the model. According to the results, it is observed that the most important determinant of the fluctuations on the BIST petrochemical index is the oil prices. While a shock in oil prices negatively affects the BIST petrochemical index, the petrochemical index responds positively to the shock in the pandemic index.

The Changing Role of CEOs in Dutch Listed Companies, 1957–2007

This paper looks at the position of CEOs in Dutch listed companies in the context of institutional change. Following up on discussions on Varieties of Capitalism and the contrasts between coordinated and liberal market economies, we explore the position of the CEO in the Netherlands in the second half of the twentieth century. On the basis of our database of Dutch CEOs, as well as an analysis of articles and published interviews, we show that the move toward a more liberal market economy had a clear impact on the position of CEOs and on the way their role was perceived. This paper highlights the importance of studying leaders in their historical context, with implications for the selection of future CEOs as they face increasing pressure on issues such as inequality and climate change.

Double “Class”. On the Popularization of Dr. Martens

In this paper processes of appropriation and commodification are discussed from the perspective of subcultures and their relation to class. Dr. Martens boots are discussed as a specific case-study. They were appropriated in the 1960s by British Skinheads to signify their working-classness. Besides being functional, design objects are apparently endowed with meaning and these can vary depending on different modes of appearance, on different styles. Today Dr. Martens, is primarily a fashion-item. This calls into question to what extent commercialization undermines the potential of design objects to be endowed with meaning. By critically discussing recent scholarly literature on subcultures and style I will explain how in recent decades the dynamics of the neo-liberal market economy with its emphasis on consumption, facilitated a further commodification of style-objects as desirable value-objects. What will be argued successively is that appropriation and commodification in late capitalist society might obscure but not obliterate the social realities of class that lie hidden beneath the flux of images in which we are engulfed today.

Left-Turn Ahead in the UK Economy: The Johnson Factor

The paper identifies the key features and specific nature of the economic strategy adopted by Boris Johnson’s conservative government. The record growth of the public sector net borrowing in the post-war era is viewed as the main risk factor to the strategy implementation. The author concludes that liberal market economy in the UK has been gradually morphing into a coordinated market economy. The paradigm shift expresses itself in the deviation from economic neoliberalism to the idea of ‘one-nation conservatism’ adapted to modern trends. In practice, this means reinforcement of the redistributive and regulatory functions of the state, as well as transition from the consumption-led to export-led growth model.

The Politics of Australia’s Economic Development

This chapter reviews the history of state–economy relations in Australia since the late nineteenth century. Although Australia is typically categorized as a liberal market economy, this chapter argues that the state has been of central importance in shaping and managing the Australian economy over time. The chapter outlines the changing role of the state in the Australian economy, a process typically shaped by alterations to state–economy relations following major economic crises, such as the Depressions of the 1890s and 1930s, as well as the stagflationary crisis of the 1970s, which ushered in more market-based, neoliberal forms of economic policy. The chapter’s key argument for the contemporary era is that supply-side-focused neoliberal policies have run their course, and that a new demand-side policy focus aimed at dealing with weak aggregate demand, inequality, and flat wages is now required in order to spur aggregate demand and economic growth.

Do Hiring Practices Penalize Women and Benefit Men for Having Children? Experimental Evidence from Germany

Although observational studies from many countries have consistently shown that motherhood negatively affects women’s wages, experimental findings on its effect on the likelihood of being hired are less conclusive. Motherhood penalties in hiring have been reported in the United States, the prototypical liberal market economy, but not in Sweden, the prototypical social-democratic welfare state. Based on a field experiment in Germany, this study examines the effects of parenthood on hiring processes in the prototypical conservative welfare state. My findings indicate that job recruitment processes indeed penalize women but not men for having children. In addition to providing theoretical explanations for why motherhood penalties in hiring are particularly likely to occur in the German context, this study also highlights several methodological and practical issues that should be considered when conducting correspondence studies to examine labour market discrimination.

Voluntarism, Corporatism and Path Dependency: The Metalworkers’ Unions Amalgamated Engineering Union and IG Metall and their Place in the History of British and German Industrial Relations

Germany and Britain have served as models of either corporatist or voluntarist industrial relations. The more recent typology of ‘varieties of capitalism’ then identified Britain as a model case of a ‘liberal market economy’ while Germany was portrayed as a (state) ‘co-ordinated market economy’. The mainstream of German-language labour history also tells this success story. Some research on the evolution of co-determination has portrayed its subject as a long-standing trait of German capitalism, with predecessors dating back as far as 1848. With its focus on the history of two key trade unions in core industries of Britain and Germany, the British metalworkers’ union the Amalgamated Society of Engineers / Amalgamated Engineering Union and the German Metal Workers’ Union / IG Metall, this article questions both exceptionalism and continuity. It argues that a path dependency exists in the structure of both unions and the industrial relations around them—but that this never came close to a linear evolution of voluntarism or corporatism. On closer examination, the history of both unions includes localist as well as centralist practices. From the 1890s both unions were part of collective bargaining with strong employers’ associations; especially after 1945 both were open to corporatist compromises. For West Germany only, such a compromise was found in the early 1950s, and not before, while in Britain that same compromise was attempted but failed during the crucial years between 1965 and 1979. Therefore, to quote Stefan Berger, this article argues that ‘similarities between the British and the German labour movements have been underestimated’.

Defining and Regulating Zero Hours Work: Lessons from a Liberal Market Economy

The apparent rise in precarious work has received increased attention in a number of countries in recent decades. However, studies highlight the difficulties of both defining and capturing the extent of precarious work. In this paper, we report on a study of zero hours contracts in Ireland and drawing on the varieties of capitalism framework, examine the lessons for both LMEs and CMEs. The study found that zero hours contracts, as defined by Irish legislation, were not common; however, evidence of ‘If and When’ contracts emerged during the course of the research. We outline our key findings showing how information garnered from qualitative research provided nuanced insights on the reality of precarious work, which was not captured in the national data set. This is important for measuring the extent of precarious work in future studies.