European Industrial Restructuring In The 1990s

The restructuring of most European industries may have taken an irreversible turn. However, is this a turn in the right direction? Is European industry becoming more competitive? This book evaluates what has been accomplished to date and what the key remaining policy and managerial tasks are for the 1990s.

Europe's Economic Challenge considers what sort of industrial economic strategy would prepare Europe for the next century. The authors examine the broad approaches to industrial policy and explore future possibilities for what is needed if these policies are to become reality.

An attentive reader embarking on this book might wonder what "the" economic transition to which the title refers might be. In this century almost all countries have gone through periods of economic transition; but which period of economic history can claim to embody the notion or to represent the era of "the" transition? Definitely, no country or group of countries has experienced anything comparable to the economic upheavals that the fall of communism has brought about in a large portion of the world in just three years (1989 to 1991). No other "transition" to date has prompted more interest and more studies among economists, academics and policy-makers than has the transformation of centrally planned economies into market-based systems. It is this transformation that has come to define "the" transition. Early in the transformation process (in November 1990), with the support of the Centre for Co-operation with the Economies in Transition (CCET), I launched a conference to examine the challenges faced by these countries. About six years have gone by and a new economic landscape has emerged in that part of the world. The difficulties in transforming these economies have exceeded all expectations, and economic performances have varied considerably across countries. The time has come, therefore, to make a first evaluation of progress and problems, with a view to extracting useful policy lessons to guide policy-makers in successfully completing the transition in the near future.

Examining late-1990s trends in regional economic development in Europe, this book explores the ways in which the restructuring of industry and territorial development relate to each other, their emergent interdependency and role in economic development. The book argues that the structural and cultural features of regions play an important part in helping or hindering concerted policies for regional development. It considers the industrial and regional institutional and policy responses to the problems caused by the interaction between restructuring industries and territorial development, and evaluates the latest ideas in institutional strategy and policy for local economic development in Europe. Finally, the book explores potential future routes to prosperity and regional economic development, providing alternative solutions to the fashion for raising industry and regional "competitiveness" in the face of the apparently inexorable "globalization" of the regional economic development.

This book posits a strategic tension between market competition and cooperation in successful industrial societies. The author envisions a new role for national industrial policy.

This book examines the reorientation of foreign trade and industrial restructuring in Eastern Europe.