Table of Contents - 6 Preface - 10 1 Introduction:Miracles,Mirages and Markets - 12 Introduction - 12 Luck, pluck and stuck in the employment miracles - 17 Globalisation and the miracles - 20 A specific (corporatist) variety of capitalism? - 26 What the chapters say - 35 2 The Dutch Model:Magic in a Flat Landscape? - 40 Introduction - 40 Labour market performance - 43 Economic performance - 46 Social outcomes - 49 Policies, the model and the results - 53 Conclusion: luck, pluck or stuck? - 59 3 Employment and Unemployment in Denmark and Sweden:Success or Failure for the Universal Welfare Model? - 66 Introduction - 66 Employment and unemployment: what happened? - 67 Unemployment and employment policies - 73 Policies and outcome – Is there a link? - 78 Conclusions - 81 4 The Evolution of the Finnish Model in the 1990s : From Depression to High-Tech Boom - 88 Introduction - 88 The background of the Finnish miracle: the economic crisis of the 1990s - 90 Political response to the crisis - 94 The recovery and the Finnish ‘miracle’ - 95 Structural issues:welfare state and labour market institutions - 104 The Nordic welfare state: Good to economic growth? - 105 Labour market institutions and corporatism - 106 Conclusion - 108 5 The Swiss Miracle:Low growth and high employment - 112 Introduction - 112 Corporatism in a fragmented polity - 112 A coordinated market economy? - 115 Recent developments - 116 Economic and labour market development - 118 Disentangling the Swiss ‘miracle’ - 122 An expanding welfare system - 128 Conclusion - 131 6 Recasting the Story of Ireland’s Miracle:Policy,Politics or Profit? - 134 The constituents of economic growth and development - 135 Possible explanations - 138 The costs: sustainability? - 146 The significance of the Irish case - 153 7 The Australian Miracle:Luck,Pluck or Being Stuck Down Under? - 158 Introduction - 158 Exports and the current account balance - 166 Employment and collective bargaining - 172 Fiscal balance - 179 Conclusion - 182 8 Last Year’s Model? Reflections on the American Model of Employment Growth - 184 Introduction - 184 An American success story 185 - 186 The American model - 190 Limits to the liberal market economy model - 196 Conclusion - 203 9 The German Contrast.On Bad Comparisons,Special Circumstances,Luck and Policies That Turned Out to Be Wrong - 206 ‘Germany isn’t working’ - 206 The German economy in comparison - 209 A bad employment record because of labour market and welfare rigidities? - 212 Accidental circumstances: housing bubble versus unification - 218 On strong German regions - 224 Prospects and possible lessons from the ‘model cases’ - 228 10 Conclusion:The Importance of Lucky Circumstances,and Still the Liberal-Social Democratic Divide - 232 In sum - 232 Recent developments and prospects - 234 What is to be learned? - 240 ‘Competitive Corporatism’? - 242 Still the liberal-social democratic divide - 245 Contributors - 280 Index - 284 Bibliography - 250