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Corporate Governance and Sustainable Prosperity pp 78–103Cite as

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Good Jobs and the Cutting Edge: The US Machine Tool Industry

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Part of the book series: The Jerome Levy Economics Institute Series ((JLEI))

Abstract

Good jobs started to disappear from the United States economy in the late 1970s. By good jobs I mean employment that can ‘provide high standards of living in terms of earnings, employment stability, and benefits for sickness and old age’ (Lazonick and O’Sullivan, 1996, p. 1). The loss of the majority of these jobs was the result of structural, not cyclical, problems in the manufacturing sector. The sharp decline of the US machine tool industry was caused by the managerial strategic failure of industry leaders and in turn led to the significant weakening of important capital goods industries in the country.

Thanks to the Jerome Levy Economics Institute of Bard College and the Committee for Industrial Theory and Assessment and the Center for Industrial Competitiveness at the University of Massachusetts Lowell for research support. Thanks also to participants in the Tenth Annual Labor Segmentation Conference sponsored by the Higgins Research Center at Notre Dame University and International Contributions to Labour Studies, and to participants in the Conference on Organizational Integration and Competitive Advantage in the Automobile Industry sponsored by the INSEAD Euro-Asian Center, the Center for Global Partnership of the Japan Foundation, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Motor Vehicle Program for their instructive comments along the way.

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Authors
  1. Robert Forrant
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Massachusetts Lowell, Massachusetts, USA

    William Lazonick (University Professor, Visiting Scholar) (University Professor, Visiting Scholar)

  2. INSEAD, Fontainebleau, France

    William Lazonick (University Professor, Visiting Scholar) & Mary O’Sullivan (Assistant Professor) (University Professor, Visiting Scholar) &  (Assistant Professor)

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© 2002 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited

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Forrant, R. (2002). Good Jobs and the Cutting Edge: The US Machine Tool Industry. In: Lazonick, W., O’Sullivan, M. (eds) Corporate Governance and Sustainable Prosperity. The Jerome Levy Economics Institute Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230523739_4

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