Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables and Figures
- Preface
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Political Parties and the Structural Conditions of the Economy
- 3 Supply-Side Economic Strategies from a Comparative Perspective (I): Public Investment and the Formation of Human Capital
- 4 Supply-Side Economic Strategies from a Comparative Perspective (II): The Public Business Sector and Tax Strategies
- 5 The Social Democratic Project: Macroeconomic Stability and State Intervention in Spain
- 6 The Political and Electoral Dimensions of the PSOE's Economic Strategy
- 7 Turning around the Postwar Consensus: Defining a Conservative Economic Framework in Britain
- 8 The Political and Electoral Dimensions of the Conservative Economic Strategy
- 9 Partisan Strategies and Electoral Coalitions
- 10 Conclusions
- Notes
- References
- Index
- More Titles in the Series
4 - Supply-Side Economic Strategies from a Comparative Perspective (II): The Public Business Sector and Tax Strategies
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables and Figures
- Preface
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Political Parties and the Structural Conditions of the Economy
- 3 Supply-Side Economic Strategies from a Comparative Perspective (I): Public Investment and the Formation of Human Capital
- 4 Supply-Side Economic Strategies from a Comparative Perspective (II): The Public Business Sector and Tax Strategies
- 5 The Social Democratic Project: Macroeconomic Stability and State Intervention in Spain
- 6 The Political and Electoral Dimensions of the PSOE's Economic Strategy
- 7 Turning around the Postwar Consensus: Defining a Conservative Economic Framework in Britain
- 8 The Political and Electoral Dimensions of the Conservative Economic Strategy
- 9 Partisan Strategies and Electoral Coalitions
- 10 Conclusions
- Notes
- References
- Index
- More Titles in the Series
Summary
Apart from providing physical and human capital directly through the public budget, whose political determinants have been explored in Chapter 3, the government may equally choose to shape the supply conditions of the economy by “indirect” means. The state may affect the provision of supply factors through the creation of a public business sector. Also, it may affect the levels of both domestic savings and private investment through tax and regulatory measures.
This chapter starts by examining the political factors that motivated the distinct strategies that OECD nations have been pursuing toward the public business sector since the late 1980s. Besides confirming again the key role partisan forces have played, this first section highlights how increasingly strained economic conditions (since the mid-1970s) broke down an already tepid consensus around postwar industrial policies and generated substantially divergent policy responses across the political space. The second section then explores the evolution of tax policies. In light of the empirical results obtained in both this chapter and Chapter 3, the third section offers a first appraisal of the political dimensions of economic policymaking in advanced nations.
STRATEGIES TOWARD THE PUBLIC BUSINESS SECTOR
Although in the 1960s public firms played, on average, a sizable role in the OECD, the size of the public business sector differed sharply across nations. As a result of the emergence since the late 1970s of an extensive political debate about the role of state-owned firms and their potential privatization, these differences only increased in the following twenty years.
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- Information
- Political Parties, Growth and EqualityConservative and Social Democratic Economic Strategies in the World Economy, pp. 82 - 104Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1998