Characteristics of this model include low levels of regulation and taxation, with the public sector providing minimal services.
It also means strong private property rights, contract enforcement, and overall ease of doing business as well as low barriers to free trade.
In northern continental Europe, most countries use mixed economy models, called Rhine capitalism[6][7] (a current term used especially for the macroeconomics of Germany, France, Belgium and the Netherlands), or its close relative the Nordic model (which refers to the macroeconomics of Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Sweden and Finland).
The debate amongst economists as to which economic model is better, circles around perspectives involving poverty, job insecurity, social services and inequality.
The return to economic liberalism in the Anglo-Saxon countries is explained by the failure of Keynesian economic management to control the stagflation in the 1970s and early 1980s[14] The Anglo-Saxon model was made from the ideas of Friedman and the Chicago School economists and the conventional wisdom of pre-Keynesian, liberal economic ideas which stated that success in fighting inflation is dependent on managing the money supply whilst efficiency in the utilization of resources and that unrestricted markets are the most efficient for this goal of combating inflation.
After Labour failed to solve the problems it was left to Margaret Thatcher's Conservatives to reverse Britain's economic decline.
Marketization, privatization and the deliberate diminishing of the remnants of the post-war social-democratic model were all affected by the American ideas.
After a process of transferring policy from the United States, it became apparent that a distinctive Anglo-Saxon economic model was forming.
The underlying assumption of this variation is that the inherent selfishness of individuals is transferred by the self-regulating market into general economic well-being, known as the invisible hand.
They claimed that without strong government private interests would undercut competition in the system which is characterized by differences in relative power.