Will Hutton

Capitalism is the only game in town, according to Will Hutton, but we can choose between different varieties. Hutton attributes the blame for Britain's poor performance to the pursuit of short-term profits for investors, instead of long-term policies which take into account the needs not only of shareholders but of suppliers, workers, trade unions and banks as well. Hutton blames the Conservative government's 'single-minded pursuit of free-market economic doctrines' for making the situation worse and leading to a fragmented society. Instead, he recommends stakeholder theory, embodied in a range of reforms to discourage short-term profit-seeking and to change the structures of corporate governance. Hutton's critics take stakeholder theory to task on a number of points. Tim Congdon shows that, far from demanding exceptionally high short-term returns on capital, UK investors accept the lowest rate of return of all the large OECD countries.^ However, in terms of output per unit of capital invested, the UK has out-performed all other G7 countries since 1979. David Green argues that Hutton's analysis of failures in the welfare state is misguided since, far from rigorously pursuing market principles, the Conservative government has continued the paternalist/corporatist approach to welfare which characterises socialism. Stanley Kalms puts the retailer's view of 'stakeholding', which he says would leave shoppers worse off. Martin Ricketts shows how competitive markets offer a choice of institutional types, including co-ops, mutual organisations, partnerships, profit-sharing firms and joint stock corporations. If 'stakeholding' is considered beneficial by businesses there is nothing to stop it developing. Elaine Sternberg argues that stakeholder theory would, in practice, be unworkable.^ It would reduce corporate governance to a complicated procedure of balancing the competing claims of various 'stakeholders', ruling out the pursuit of any specific objective, commercial or otherwise. In keeping with the symposium format which has made previous publications in this series so useful for teaching purposes, Hutton is given the chance to respond to his critics. Stakeholding and its Critics thus presents a valuable cross-section of the debate on this important and topical issue.

This is about more than geographical location of Maine, and certainly is not a picture postcard of the coastal state. Some characters have arrived by accident, others are trying to get out. The collection opens, closes, and is interlaced with stories that focus on Jocelyn, a wryly disaffected teenager living with her aunt and uncle while attending summer school. As in life, the narratives of other characters interrupt Jocelyn's, sometimes challenging, sometimes embellishing her view.

Between 1880 and 1939 the two great forces of the western world collided. Them and Us is the story of that social upheaval. It is a tale of how the United States sold its heiresses into ennobled slavery at the turn of the century, found the tables turned around the time of the First World War, and ended up subjugating smart society to the "Almighty Dollar" in the 1930s. It is about prejudice, fear, bitchiness, arrivistes, fine architecture, low life, ostentation and sheer incomprehension. It is about the Old World's dread of the power of New America and the New World's longing for the historical status of the Old. - Jacket flap.