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The food sector has for years been one of the top performers among the manufacturing industries in terms of turnover on sales. Its remarkable development since 1991 is mainly due to its proactive entrepreneurs who have shown high personal commitment and invested their expertise and capital in the establishment and expansion of state-of-the-art companies. The Saxon spirit of invention is quite proverbial. Still today, the actors in the food sector of the Free State of Saxony continue to show courage for innovation with a large number of new products and continuous process optimization. The future is being shaped by new trends for more sustainability and latest findings in nutrition research. Press date: 20.08.2018

"German structural policy is characterized by a composite indicator with three targets: (1) minimization of unemployment, (2) maximization of GDP, and (3) equalization of regional unemployment rates. The composite indicator with given target weights is maximized subject to budget constraints and some administrative restrictions. The optimal combinations of target indices obtained for variable weight ratios are to be considered by a policy maker who thereby makes the final choice among already optimized outcomes, not being burdened with adjusting the target weights. The optimization is performed for econometric predictions-2004 which are derived from regional data for 1994-2002. Comparing with the optimal budget distribution, the effciency of the actual 'manual' budget distribution in 2000-2002 is about 4 per cent, that is, the results actually obtained for 6 Bio. EUR could be obtained for 241 Mio.EUR (= 4 per cent of the actual budget). Such a bad implementation of active labour market policies can be responsible for their low efficiency reported in some empirical studies and misinterpreted as their uselessness. Besides, it is found that the most productive jobs (most contributing to GDP) require least subsidies. Finally, taxes expected from new jobs allow to consider the problem from a managerial viewpoint. In particular, the government can maximize tax returns from investments in labour market policies." (author's abstract)

This study is the third part in a series of three studies dealing with the technological potential of Germany's Rhine-MainArea. It focusses on the national conditions for high-techcompanies and analysis the strengths and weaknesses of 57 companies from the Rhine-Main-area and abroad. Not only there networking and regional integration are discused, but also their strategies with respect to implications for locational structures. On this basis recommendations for regional economic and technological policy are formulated to strengthening the innovation and production base of the region.