Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- 1 The European Integration Experience, 1945-1958
- 2 The Founding Fathers
- 3 The Marshall Plan and Western European Reconstruction
- 4 The Management of Markets: Business, Governments and Cartels in Post-war Europe
- 5 Europe’s First Constitution: The European Political Community, 1952-1954
- 6 Agricultural Pressure Groups and the Origins of the Common Agricultural Policy
- 7 ‘Thank You, M. Monnet; I’ll Take Care of That’: Some Counterfactual Reflections on Institutional Creation and the Origins of European Integration
- 8 The Dynamics of Policy Inertia: The UK’s Participation in and Withdrawal from the Spaak Negotiations
- 9 The European Integration Experience, 1958-1973
- 10 ‘An Act of Creative Leadership’: The End of the OEEC and the Birth of the OECD
- 11 The United Kingdom and the Free Trade Area: A Post Mortem
- 12 ‘Two Souls, One Thought’? The EEC, the USA and the Management of the International Monetary System
- 13 A Dismal Decade? European Integration in the 1970s
- 14 EFTA and European Integration, 1973-1994: Vindication or Marginalisation?
- 15 The Concentric Circles of the European Union’s Trade Regime, 1989 to the Present
- 16 Lessons from the Euro Experience
- 17 European Identities
- 18 The Landscape of European Studies
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Publications of Richard T. Griffiths
4 - The Management of Markets: Business, Governments and Cartels in Post-war Europe
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 November 2022
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- 1 The European Integration Experience, 1945-1958
- 2 The Founding Fathers
- 3 The Marshall Plan and Western European Reconstruction
- 4 The Management of Markets: Business, Governments and Cartels in Post-war Europe
- 5 Europe’s First Constitution: The European Political Community, 1952-1954
- 6 Agricultural Pressure Groups and the Origins of the Common Agricultural Policy
- 7 ‘Thank You, M. Monnet; I’ll Take Care of That’: Some Counterfactual Reflections on Institutional Creation and the Origins of European Integration
- 8 The Dynamics of Policy Inertia: The UK’s Participation in and Withdrawal from the Spaak Negotiations
- 9 The European Integration Experience, 1958-1973
- 10 ‘An Act of Creative Leadership’: The End of the OEEC and the Birth of the OECD
- 11 The United Kingdom and the Free Trade Area: A Post Mortem
- 12 ‘Two Souls, One Thought’? The EEC, the USA and the Management of the International Monetary System
- 13 A Dismal Decade? European Integration in the 1970s
- 14 EFTA and European Integration, 1973-1994: Vindication or Marginalisation?
- 15 The Concentric Circles of the European Union’s Trade Regime, 1989 to the Present
- 16 Lessons from the Euro Experience
- 17 European Identities
- 18 The Landscape of European Studies
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Publications of Richard T. Griffiths
Summary
For much of the post-war period, the operation of the free market was seen as too capricious and too unpredictable to be allowed to determine the path and tempo of domestic economic development. The past decade, however, has witnessed a new veneration of the market as the key to growth and prosperity in the world. Free and unencumbered market forces have become the explanation for the boom among the Pacific tigers, the panacea for prosperity among developed countries, the textbook for restructuring former socialist republics and the last hope for the debt-encumbered nations of the Third World. The task of governments is to create conditions for vigorous market competition and to roll back previously imposed impediments and restrictions on factors of production. Unshackled domestic competition and the search for international competitive advantage guarantee the emergence of the robust and dynamic firms of the future. The ‘globalisation’ of the world economy is a symbol of their success and the ‘complex interdependence’ and ‘globalisation’ that accompany their activities transcend attempts at domestic interference.
In this vision, not surprisingly, there is little room for mollycoddled domestic monopolies (natural or contrived). These are credited with dulling the search for innovation and the ability to seize international opportunities. Michael Porter, in his influential study The Competitive Advantage of Nations, argues that:
It is hard to find examples of true competitive advantage in industries where there are cartels. […] Cartels dampen or suspend the self-reinforcing process of upgrading that grows out of domestic rivalry. A cartel may maintain profits for a time, but usually it marks the beginning of the end of international success.
One would not therefore expect cartels to be accompanied by economic growth. This seems to be confirmed by the 1930s, which are generally associated with the high point of cartel activity, and which coincided in Europe with slow rates of economic growth and an even slower expansion in trade. The decade was also characterised by government intervention which, if not actively promoting cartel formation, was at least neutral towards it. The 1950s, by contrast, have been identified with high rates of economic growth and even greater rates of trade expansion.
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- Information
- 'Thank you M. Monnet'Essays on the History of European Integration, pp. 89 - 112Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2013