AMSTERDAM — Competitiveness has become one of the economic buzzwords of our time. U.S. President Barack Obama trumpeted it during his State of the Union address in January, while European leaders and Japanese fiscal policy minister Kaoru Yosano have embraced it as a priority.
But what sort of competitiveness do they have in mind?
Asked during an interview in September 2007 whether European governments should liberalize their countries' labor codes, former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan responded that Europe's labor-protection laws significantly inhibited economic performance and resulted in chronically high unemployment across the continent.