The stagflation crisis and the European automotive industry, 1973-85

Abstract

The success in coping with the stagflation crisis depended on two groups of factors. On the one hand, survival depended on assemblers’ strategies to promote economies of scale and scope, process and product innovation, related diversification, internationalisation and, sometimes, changes of ownership. On the other, firms benefitted from long-term path-dependent growth in their countries of origin’s industrial systems. Indeed, the main winners of the period, Toyota and Volkswagen, can rightly be seen as outstanding examples of Confucian and Rhine capitalism. However, since then, global convergence with Anglo-Saxon capitalism may have eroded some of the institutional bases of their strength.