Governments, Markets, and Growth

Zysman demonstrates that there is a direct relationship between a nation's financial system and its government's ability to restart the growth engine.

John Zysman is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley.

As the title suggests, this first-rate book covers a lot of ground. At the core is a pioneering analysis of the way national financial systems facilitate or hinder the conduct of industrial policy. A broader focus is on how the different relations of government and market in Japan, France, Germany, Britain, and the U.S. affect each country's ability to cope with changes in the international economy. All these financial systems are shown to be subject to new challenges that differ a good bit from one another. What they have in common, the author reminds us, is that they have provided the foundations for acceptable political systems which may also be called into question if they cannot cope with economic problems.

Peter A. Gourevitch, University of California, San Diego:

John Zysman has done a remarkable job analyzing a very difficult, neglected subject in a way which advances greatly both scholarly and general concerns, Building on a vital core—finance—Zysman constructs an analytic edifice capable of bearing great weight in the burden of interpreting other important issues—industrial policy, the politics of coping with changes in the competitive situation of industries in different countries.

Robert Heilbroner, New School for Social Research:

Governments, Markets, and Growth is an original and important contribution to the debate about industrial policy. John Zysman holds out no panaceas for America. Rather, he helps us understand the nature of the institutional forces that set the stage for different kinds of policies. We are not likely to formulate an effective policy for this country until we have thought hard about the relationships between government, industry, and finance that Zysman explores in this path-breaking study.