Yesterday, Edmund Phelps received the 2006 Nobel Prize in Economics. Today, he published an editorial in the W$J defending "dynamic capitalism." He compares the US, Canada, and the UK with Continental Europe:

The American and Continental systems are not operationally equivalent, contrary to some neoclassical views. Let me use the word "dynamism" to mean the fertility of the economy in coming up with innovative ideas believed to be technologically feasible and profitable -- in short, the economy's talent at commercially successful innovating. In this terminology, the free enterprise system is structured in such a way that it facilitates and stimulates dynamism while the Continental system impedes and discourages it.

Phelps admits that  he has an "idealized portrait of capitalism," but he makes the case in the strongest terms that capitalism is more just than "corporatism." He cites, as "new evidence," the "World Values Survey[, which] indicates that the Continent's workers find less job satisfaction and derive less pride from the work they do in their job."

It is a long piece by editorial-page standards, but worth reading.

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