It is going beyond the 10%, as many firms are now starting to do, that poses the real risks to a firm's competitiveness.

ECONOMIST: Human capital and the crisis

D-mark (and hence the firm's international competitiveness).

ECONOMIST: Trade unions

The recently launched Competitiveness Council, which includes the chairmen of British Aerospace and Glaxo Wellcome, a pharmaceuticals firm, has a remit that is striking both in its vagueness and its ambition.

ECONOMIST: The new establishment