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Over the past four decades the wealthiest OECD economies-in Europe, North America, and Australasia- have faced massive structural change. Industrial sectors, which were once considered the economic backbone of these societies, have shrunk inexorably in terms of size and economic significance, while service sectors have taken over as the primary engines of output and employment expansion. The impact on labor markets has been profound: in many OECD countries more than three-quarters of employment is now in services, while industrial sectors, on average, account for less than one-fifth. This sectoral shift in the locus of economic activity has potentially radical implications for politics and society. However, these implications are only beginning to be understood. This path-breaking book is a systematic attempt to understand the distinct political economy of service societies. It examines how different types of socio-economic regimes manage the service transition, with a central focus on job creation and destruction and the changing characteristics of labor markets, and shows that the economic, distributional, and political outcomes with which it is associated vary across countries depending on their political-institutional structures. Salient Features First systematic examination of the service-based economy Presents new empirical research and innovative ideas from leading scholars in the field Interdisciplinary appeal across the Social Sciences, including Political Science, Economics, Sociology, Business, and Public Policy Original contribution to the "Varieties of Capitalism" debate About the Author Dr. Anne Wren received her Ph.D. in Political Economy and Government from Harvard University in 2000 and was an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Stanford University between 2000 and 2007. In 2006 she was awarded a Marie Curie Excellence Team grant by the European Commission to establish a research team working on the political economy of the service transition at the Institute for International Integration Studies (IIIS), Trinity College Dublin. She returned to Dublin to direct this research program and is currently a Research Associate of IIIS. Table of Contents 1: Anne Wren: Introduction: The Political Economy of the Post-Industrial Age Part 1: Socio-Economic Regimes and the Service Transition 2: Torben Iversen and David Soskice: A Political-Institutional Model of Real Exchange Rates, Competitiveness, and the Division of Labor 3: Anne Wren, Mate Fodor and Sotiria Theodoropoulou: The Trilemma Revisited: Implications for Inequality and Employment Creation of the ICT Revolution and the Expansion of Service Trade 4: Moira Nelson and John Stephens: The Service Transition and Women's Employment 5: Karen M. Anderson and Anke Hassel: Pathways of Change in Coordinated Market Economies: Training Regimes in Germany and the Netherlands 6: Ben Ansell and Jane Gingrich: A Tale of Two Trilemmas: Varieties of Higher Education and the Service Economy Part 2: Political Outcomes of Economic Change 7: Philip Manow, Kees Van Kersbergen, and Gijs Schumacher: De-Industrialization and the Expansion of the Welfare State: A Reassessment 8: Anne Wren and Philipp Rehm: Service Expansion, International Exposure, and Political Preferences 9: Lucy Barnes: The Political Economy of Working Time and Redistribution 10: Torben Iversen and Frances Rosenbluth: The Political Economy of Gender in Service Sector Economies