East Asia has been one of the most important regions in the global economic system. In this thesis, the East Asian miracle and the success of China&rsquo / s transition are studied by overviewing the literature. The East Asian economies had experienced sustainable rapid growth from the 1960s to the end of 1990s, until the Asian crisis in 1997. China started her transition from the central planning system at the end of the 1970s. Since the transition began, China has grown at rates even higher than developed countries and she is one of the countries which survived the Asian crisis nearly without damage. Comparing these two experiences in East Asia would give an idea on the features of development in this region. The conclusion is that China shares the features of developmental state which is attributed to the miraculous East Asian economies.

The main aim of this thesis is to discuss the role of innovation in the capitalist mode of production so as to achieve the domination of capitalism in the human world by capitalizing it. The idea of freedom is handled as a reason for politics when one confronts another in this quest. Process innovations are accepted as methods of improving the profitability of production which deprives dispossessed masses from their productive power outside the workplace while product innovation is claimed to be the process of improving profitability of consumption which results in increased intervention of capitalism in the relation between the human being and his wants through pacification. Thus, as capitalism continues growing, it becomes more a mediator between the human being and materials, which gives it more authority in society.

This thesis questions the connection between knowledge and finance and advances an account that links both in a two-folded way. The first level departs from what separates the two opposite views or alternative explanations about the value of knowledge. The source and essence of the extra profits in information goods or commodities, such as digital media contents and software, featuring increasing returns to scale owing to their peculiar cost structure manifested by a high fixed cost and very low constant marginal cost, is what separates the two views about the value of knowledge. In light of the near-decomposability/modularity hypothesis, the extra profits in information commodities should arise from &#039 / information hiding,&#039 / which is intrinsic to nearly-decomposable systems or modular architecture because they are built on an ignorance on the parts in regard to the other parts and the whole of system. Such (hidden) design information that gives rise to parts or modules creates, at the same time, the future paths of action or (real) options, according to real-options perspective. When the two perspectives are combined, knowledge production, as distinct from subsequent knowledge commodity production, basically becomes an option creation process. Then, it becomes possible to argue that the concurrence of knowledge and finance is not a coincidence at all because the logics of accumulation is no different but almost identical, which is the second level of the two-folded account attempted in this study. The main contribution of this thesis is to build an account that links financialization to knowledge via the notion of modularity. Such an account sees financialization as a reflection and consequence of a value-driven permanent innovation economy developed under the &#039 / IT paradigm&#039 / in order to exploit a surplus peculiar and intrinsic to the modular structure that makes &#039 / information hiding&#039 / an integral part of such architectures since they are by definition built on an ignorance on the parts in regard to the other parts and the whole of system.

In this study, the concept of &lsquo / Social Market Economy&rsquo / which was the leading idea in the post-Second World War economic order of Germany will be analysed. This analysis will also take into consideration the Economic School of Ordoliberalism which emerged in the inter-war period and greatly influenced the construction of the idea of &lsquo / Social Market Economy&rsquo / with its theoretical principles. Some politicians and theoreticians in the post-war period also contributed to the development of the concept. Within this theoretical framework, the post-war economic policies and developments will be surveyed and the newly established economic order will be compared with the ideals of Social Market Economy theoretical programme. In particular, the impact of the Social Market Economy upon the evolution of German Model of Capitalism will be explored by taking into account the significant changes in the role of the state in the economy and the conduct of relations between the social partners especially since the 1960&rsquo / s.

The main objective of this thesis is to propose a new perspective in terms of the convergence debate as it is discussed in varieties-of-capitalism (VoC) literature. The initial configuration of VoC stance as well as a part of the literature foresees the convergence of hybrids to a liberal market economy. By revisiting the core arguments of national-systems-of-innovation approach as well as the elaborations of the various critiques of VoC stance, we will propose the opposite. If we are to take &lsquo / innovation&rsquo / as a starting-point of analysis and favor government intervention with respect to it, hybrids are more likely to converge to a political economy that resembles more a coordinated-one. However the meanings of the key terms such as &lsquo / coordinated-market-economy&rsquo / and &lsquo / convergence&rsquo / will be re-evaluated to be able to provide an adequate standpoint in terms of the convergence debate.