Economic Performance in the Market Era

The fallout from the worst economic crisis within living memory has commanded unprecedented attention from economists and others attempting to understand and contain it through a mixture of global and domestic action. In this book we approach the crisis not as a single event but as part of a process whose roots reside in longer-term tendencies that have developed in previous historical periods. To make the study manageable we investigate the issues largely from the perspective of the British economy, which we believe to be representative, indeed an exemplar, of similar liberal market economies. Britain is now one of the most market friendly economies in the world following several decades of a reform programme that began in 1979 with the election of a Conservative government, and which has continued to underpin that of subsequent governments, including that of New Labour (1997–2010). As noted in Card and Freeman (2004): ‘Beginning with Margaret Thatcher and continuing under John Major and Tony Blair, these reforms sought to increase the efficacy of labor and product markets and limit government and institutional involvement in economic decision making’ (p.9).