Changing partnerships: Firms and the French state

Lindblom's hypothesis that in market‐oriented systems businessmen predominate over statesmen is tested in relation to the way French firms have switched partners since the 1980s. Instead of a dirigiste—style special relationship with government, they have formed multinational partnerships. The implications of the new competitive context, under the pressure of delocalisation panic, are considered, prior to the examination of the effects of nationalisation and privatisation on the national identity of firms. The virtual bankruptcy of Crédit Lyonnais is examined as an example of state‐dependent capitalism, and the impact of EC competition policy is considered. The partial industrial disengagement by the French government in favour of market competition reinforces the applicability of Lindblom's hypothesis to the relations between firms and state in France.     

Face to Face with Phineas Gage

We present here a reproduction of a daguerreotype of Phineas Gage that came into our possession more than 30 years ago. It is, as far as we know, the only image of this famous patient. We describe how we identified the subject in the image, describe how daguerreotypes are made and set out our comparisons of the image with the Phineas Gage life mask and tamping iron held in the Warren Anatomical Museum, Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine.     

Market Relations as Wuwei: Daoist Concepts in Analysis of China's Post-1978 Market Economy

This paper shows how wuwei (effortless action) and associated concepts drawn from Daoist thought are applied in analyses of the Chinese market economy and state-economy relations published in recent issues of social science and Communist Party journals in the People's Republic of China. Such use of traditional concepts partially displaces Marxist terminology from “diagnostic economics”. In discussing the use of these concepts in 5 articles published between 2000 and 2008, the economic theory of Daodejing is also presented.