Saving and Economic Growth from a Nordic Perspective

Introduction

The term “social corporatism”, invented by Katzenstein (1985), is used in this volume to denote economies with centralized wage bargaining institutions, a strong and interventionist state and cooperative mood or consensus in economic policy decision-making. A high degree of labour market solidarity, evidenced by low wage dispersion, high employment and efficient protection of individuals against the loss of employment, is seen as one outcome of social corporatism. According to all these criteria the three Nordic countries – Sweden, Finland and Norway – are highly socially corporatist economies; their labour market performance has been exceptionally good in the post-war era, the degree of centralization in their labor market organizations is relatively high, they have low wage dispersion and an egalitarian welfare state etc. One fundamental question in this volume concerns the exact functional relationship between these factors, i.e. can corporatism really explain macroeconomic performance of a country (see papers by Pekkarinen, Pohjola and Rowthorn, in particular, in this volume).

• ISSN: 0357-9603
• ISBN: 951-9282-15-7