Abstract
The 2008 economic crisis has triggered a flow of articles and books predicting the end of the market economy system and recommending an exit from the capitalism, allegedly accountable not only for the current economic and financial disaster, but also for the destruction of the environment, the deepening of income inequalities and the consumption society’s materialism. The crisis has shaken public trust in the market economy and several economists1 believe that, to drive recovery, new models of capitalism must be embraced. Will society maintain the individualistic business model of capitalism that created the crisis with recurring structural public deficits, excessive rewards for bankers and traders, costly bailouts for the banks and austerity for the people, or will society develop and implement a new balance between state, business and society? How can the capitalist system be amended and economic mutations adopted without altering its core principles? Several economic and social changes are currently taking place in the world and in the European economy as a consequence of the economic crisis. This subject is today a worldwide debate.
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Notes
Among the authors covering this debate, we have: Hawken, P., Lovins, A. and Lovins, L.H. (1999) Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution, New York, Little, Brown and Company;
Amartya Sen (1999) Development as Freedom, New York, Alfred Knopf;
Greider, W. (2003) The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy, New York, Simon & Schuster Paperbacks;
Alperovitz, G. (2005) America Beyond Capitalism: Reclaiming Our Wealth, Our Liberty and Our Democracy, New Jersey, John Wiley & Sons Inc.;
Rifkin, J. (2009) The Empathic Civilization, New York, the Penguin Group;
Bremmer, I. (2010) The End of the Free Market: Who Wins the War Between States and Corporations?, New York, Portfolio, the Penguin Group;
Sainsbury, D. (2013) Progressive Capitalism, London, Biteback Publishing.
Levchenko, A.A., Lewis, L.T. and Tesar, L.L. (2009) The Collapse of International Trade During the 2008–2009 Crisis, University of Michigan and NBER, December 30.
Acemogğlu, D., Robinson, J.A. and Verdier, T. (2012) Can’t we all be more like Scandinavians? MIT paper, September.
Rothkopf, D. (2012) Power Inc. The Epic Rivalry between Big Business and Government, New York, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux.
Lambin, J.J. (2011) Quel avenir pour le capitalisme?, Paris, Dunod.
BBC World Service (2009) Wide dissatisfaction with capitalism, twenty years after the fall of Berlin wall, November 9, available at http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/article/btglobalizationtradera/644.php.
On the crisis of the 1970s, see: Frieden, J.A. (2006) Global Capitalism: Its Fall and Rise in the Twentieth Century, New York, Norton and Norton Company, Chapter 16 (oil shocks, commodity boom, stagflation, recession, Volcker counter-shock, etc.).
Samuelson P., (1948/2009) Economics: An Introductory Analysis, 19th edition, New York, McGraw-Hill. The mixed economy model is also called the “golden age of controlled capitalism” inspired by Keynesian ideas.
Steger, M.B. and Roy, R.K. (2010) Neoliberalism: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford, Oxford University Press, p.14.
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© 2014 Jean-Jacques Lambin
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Lambin, JJ. (2014). The Market Economy System in Question. In: Rethinking the Market Economy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137392916_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137392916_1
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