The OECD and the world market: antecedents of deep marketization

ABSTRACT

This paper documents the commitment of the OECD from its creation in 1961 to the continuous development of the world market along liberal lines. In doing so, it details a significant effort to promote what might be called proto-strategies of deep marketization across its ‘Northern’ advanced economy membership. These were articulated at key junctures: in its earliest years, then in response to the rise of the NICs (Newly Industrialized Countries) in the 1970s, again in the context of what it diagnosed as the crisis of the welfare state in the 1980s, and in a clutch of studies in the mid-1990s that anticipated and welcome the rise of China and other emerging economies. The argument made was always that sustainable growth in the advanced countries and the continued development of the world market as a whole could best be achieved if OECD members would abstain from protectionism, embrace competition and reform labour markets and social welfare in order to maintain and enhance their competitiveness in the global economy. Particular attention is drawn to the 1994 Jobs Study, which addressed the need for welfare and labour market reform in terms that foreshadowed the universal policies of deep marketization in evidence today.