Delayed Adjustment: Economic crisis, political change and state intervention in the Spanish shipbuilding industry, about 1975

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Delayed Adjustment: Economic crisis, political change and state intervention in the Spanish shipbuilding industry, about 1975–1990

Valdaliso, Jesus M.

This article seeks to explain the impact of the international shipping crisis of the 1970s on the Spanish shipbuilding industry (then the third biggest in Europe after Sweden and Germany) and the responses to the crisis given by the state and by shipyards. It contributes to the literature on the decline of merchant shipbuilding in Europe since the 1970s. Based on international production statistics, annual reports of companies and business associations, policy plans and documents and specialist journals, this paper employs an agency perspective and the theoretical framework of historical institutionalism to examine the interests and actions of the main actors involved – shipyards and ship owners, labour unions, the public entrepreneurial sector (INI) and the different governments – and the outcomes of those actions on public policies and on the development of this industry.