Kathleen Thelen. How Institutions Evolve: The Political Economy of Skills in Germany, Britain, the United States, and Japan. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2004. xv + 333 pp. ISBN 0-521-83768-5, $75.00 (cloth); ISBN 0-521-54674-5, $29.99 (paper).

Kathleen Thelen has written an incredibly fascinating book thatshould be obligatory reading for anyone interested in the historyof skill formation or the evolution of institutions in general.For those working on the "varieties of capitalism," path-dependency,punctured equilibrium, or historical institutionalism, thistext should feature prominently in their work. Thelen’sgoal in this book is to discover why Germany, Britain, the UnitedStates, and Japan pursued different "paths" of skill formation.She traces the origin of each path     

Konrad H. Jarausch. After Hitler: Recivilizing Germans, 1945-1995

Konrad Jarausch has undertaken the ambitious project of describingthe transformation of Germany from a nationalistic society capableof horrific crimes to a civilized society that respects humanrights. The author contends that Germany changed over decadesthrough a collective learning process initially spearheadedby a minority of anti-Fascist Germans as well as by the UnitedStates and the Soviet Union. By analyzing the development ofpublic discourse and individual experiences since World WarII, the book seeks to show     

Linking agricultural policies with obesity and noncommunicable diseases: A new perspective for a globalising world

In light of the shift in policy paradigm in agriculture from state intervention to market liberalisation and globalisation, this paper develops a series of hypotheses on the relationship between agricultural policies and consumer diets. The first hypothesis is that the paradigm shift has led to greater specialisation of production, so changing the ability and incentive for producers to supply certain foods relative to others. Second, the shift has affected farmgate prices (both up and down), so creating opportunities for the industries which purchase farm commodities (the food consuming industries – FCIs) to substitute lower priced ingredients, thereby influencing the nutritional quality and content of foods available in the marketplace. Third, it has increased the ability of the FCIs to “add value” through product innovation and marketing, creating a market characterised by highly differentiated products targeted to individualised preferences, thus increasing the acceptability of a wider variety and quantity of food products.     

Marketing practice in small tourism and hospitality firms

There has been a paucity of research into the marketing practices and approaches of small tourism and hospitality firms, until the 1990s. This paper goes some way towards improving knowledge in this area by reporting the findings of the first national survey of small tourism and hospitality firms in the UK. Four key areas of marketing practice are highlighted: marketing planning, promotion methods, pricing methods and marketing research. The paper concludes that although a great deal of small hospitality and tourism firm marketing may be characterised as haphazard and unsophisticated, there is much to commend it in the UK. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.