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While promoting the economic growth, energy has also brought pollution problems to the world environment, which has gradually become a bottleneck impeding sustainable economic development. In view of the rapid evolution of urbanization and industrialization, economic growth is increasingly dependent on the energy consumption, the development of the two is difficult to coordinate, and the internal contradictions are becoming increasingly serious, which hinders the sustainable development of economic growth. This study establishes the relationship between energy consumption and economic growth according to the energy Kuznets curve and studies the future trend of China's sustainable development through the comparative analysis of the energy Kuznets curve of the United States and Germany. The results show that, at the turning point of energy consumption, China's energy economic rate is higher than that of Germany and the United States. In addition, in terms of urbanization rate and industrial structure, although China's tertiary industry has made a breakthrough, it is still lower than that of the United States and Germany, but the level of urbanization rate has made significant progress. In short, China has obvious advantages in future economic development and has a late developing advantage compared with the United States and Germany. This paper makes an empirical analysis of the relationship between energy consumption and economic growth in OECD countries and finds out the turning point of energy consumption, so as to provide a theoretical basis for coordinating China's energy consumption and economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates the role of preference shocks during the Great Depression in Germany. From Euler equation residuals, I am able to identify a series of contractionary shocks that struck the German economy from 1929 to 1932. I apply the sequence of these taste innovations to a dynamic general-equilibrium model and find that the size and the order of shocks can generate a pattern that can explain the lion's share of the decline in economic activity. The artificial economy also predicts a swift recovery after 1932, thereby questioning any significant effects of Nazi economic policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that German industrial relations are undergoing a process of fundamental liberalization, albeit incremental and protracted over time, referencing the paper "Softening industrial relations institutions, hardening growth model: The transformation of the German political economy" published in the December 2014 issue of the journal "Stato e Mercato." Topics of the paper authored by Lucio Baccaro and Chiara Benassi include the German economic growth model.

Many regions have experienced long-run economic fluctuations generated by the life cycles of their dominant industrial clusters. During the downswings in the 1970s and 1980s, proactive structural policies were typically launched in German regions to combat job losses in their core clusters and to create new jobs in new industries. With respect to the German State of Bremen, this paper provides empirical evidence of: (1) a long-run regional downswing; (2) the potential job effects of proactive regional industrial policy programmes in terms of increasing regional employment, by safeguarding jobs in the regional core industries and creating new jobs in new growth industries; and (3) a time pattern in the job effects, which are related to the different generations of programmes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents information related to several articles on economics. Economic growth and productivity in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Germany and Japan in the post war period; Dividend policies of electric utility firms; Relationship between the quantity of materials imported by the United States and the level of industrial production and prices of imports.

This paper analyzes the relationship between sustainability views, drivers and barriers and concrete procurement practices for sustainability in the German food service industry (FSI), building on earlier work of Rankin et al. (2011) on this topic. Further innovation lies in the explicit regard to product-specific differences in the importance and level of implementation of sustainable sourcing, as well as in the special focus on the FSI, a sector with significant economic importance, for which only small amounts of information can be found. For this study, qualitative interviews among head chefs and quantitative standardized surveys among decision makers from the FSI were conducted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper empirically studies the contribution of air transport to regional economic development in Germany. We find that the scale and direction of output effects of air services and airport infrastructure differ among airports. These differences are driven by ‘opportunity costs’ of airport capital and by positive output effects from air transport connectivity. We argue that the latter impacts potentially depend on traffic characteristics. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Rarely have economists been treated to an economic "experiment" comparable to the one of German reunification. In less than a year, a single political and economic entity is being fused from two economies with fundamentally different underlying principles of economic organization and substantially different levels of economic development. German Economic and Monetary Union (GEMU) on the process of European economic and political integration, many European Community (EC) policymakers have perceived German reunification as adding impetus to the "1992" program. This paper examines economic implications of GEMU for the European integration process. In so doing, it makes reference to the burgeoning literature on the economic consequences of German reunification. Consideration of statistical information related to the performance of eastern and western Germany since June 1990 permits some evaluation of the validity of certain hypotheses underlying earlier studies of GEMU, as well as an assessment of likely consequences for EC policymaking and performance.

This article discusses various aspects of the role of fiscal and monetary policy in German economic recovery. One of the prerequisites of economic recovery, but by no means the only one, was the restoration of a workable currency. The spectacular increase in production and delivery through legitimate channels of trade and the achievement of substantial price stability in spite of rapid decontrol of prices demonstrate the immediate success of currency reform. From the beginning of the debate on currency reform for Germany it was recognized, however, that restoration of a new, stable money was an important, but by no means the only, contribution currency reform had to make towards German economic rehabilitation and recovery. Other objectives, were restoring incentives to save and channeling scarce funds into capital investments of the highest economic priority. It was also necessary to assure a distribution of incomes and goods which would provide sufficient rewards to farmers and workers for productive efforts and at the same time meet the minimum demands of equity.

DIW Berlin has examined the effects of investment in research and development on economic growth in Germany and other OECD countries. Their results show that an increase of one percentage point in research and development spending in the economy as a whole leads to a short-term average increase in GDP growth of approximately 0.05 to 0.15 percentage points. The coeficient for Germany is at the upper end of that range. The analysis shows, however, that it is dificult to separate the effect of aggregate R&D into contributions from private- and public sector R&D. R&D investment in both sectors has seen strong growth in Germany in recent years, particularly when compared internationally. For a country that owes its prosperity largely to its research-intensive manufacturing sector and to production-related, knowledge-intensive services, research and development remains key to future growth. It is therefore essential that Germany does not ease up on its efforts to increase R&D investment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study analyses the relationship between the development of registered intellectual property and economic development in Germany. It shows a differing evidence for specific categories of intellectual property, indicating that not all intellectual property rights show a significant impact on the German Gross Domestic Product. Positive impacts have the stocks of patents, trademarks and designs. Applications for utility models surprisingly have a negative impact, what challenges developments of the economic theory. The empirical results delight also the specific structure of the technological and innovation system in the German economy, showing a national intellectual property profile with three key factors: product differentiation, complex technologies and design development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the effects of small banks on economic growth. We firs theoretically show that small banks operating at a regional level can spur local economic growth. As compared with big interregional banks, small regional banks are more effective in promoting local economic growth, especially in regions with lower initial endowment and severe credit rationing. We then test the model predictions using a sample of German banks and corresponding regional statistics. We find that small regional banks are more important funding providers in regions with low access to finance. The empirical result support the theoretical hypotheses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spanish political economy experienced a profound decadence during the second half of the nineteenth century. Such period of isolation came to an end during the early twentieth century. The most outstanding economists of that period such as Flores de Lemus, Bernis or Torres were persuaded that Spanish economic development was strongly linked to a tax system reform. At the same time, numerous writings on public finance were published by secondary authors and a wide range of foreign handbooks were translated into Spanish. Consequently, public finance became an outstanding channel for the introduction of marginal theory and German Historicism into Spain. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

During the last few years, the People's Republic of China has become an increasingly important trading partner for Germany. Particularly in the wake of the global economic and financial crisis that began in 2008, trade with China has been an important driver of economic growth in Germany as German industry benefited from the increase in Chinese import demand more than other European countries. However, Chinese economic growth has slowed somewhat since then. After recording double-digit growth rates in the past, the new Chinese government is now attempting to stabilize annual economic growth at 7.5 percent. It is therefore likely that future German export growth rates to China will be lower than in recent years. Further, according to the government's new plans, Chinese economic growth should rely less on export and investment, as has been the case to date, and more on domestic performance and private consumption in the future. It is anticipated that this shift will also have a negative impact on German export industry, which is dominated by capital goods. Additionally, Chinese demand for imports is likely to decline as China's domestic production of cars and machinery expands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While earlier research has shown that regional restructuring after reunification has led to broad de-industrialization processes in eastern Germany's chemical industry, this article focuses on how re-bundling processes at the corporate level have stimulated adjustments to the changing economic and political environment leading to a renewed regional development trajectory. The analysis is based on a conceptualization that assesses diachronic processes of rupture and re-bundling by applying a bottom-up perspective of how corporate adjustments and restructuring processes generate re-bundling types that manifest themselves in broader regional re-bundling scenarios. The empirical analysis focuses on a qualitative case study of Bitterfeld- Wolfen, the eastern region with the largest chemical industry. The research provides evidence that, although new firm formation has remained weak and acquisitions of chemical multinationals have generated structures only tenuously embedded in the regional economy, modernization and re-bundling process have contributed to a renewed, smaller yet stable, regional chemical industry. The analysis further shows that the associated processes depended on the roles of individual industrial leaders in the region, who acted as network builders, mobilized joint action and stimulated the development of a collective regional spirit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After German reunification, interregional subsidies accounted for approximately 4% of gross fixed capital investment in the new federal states (i.e. those which were formerly part of the German Democratic Republic). We show that, between 1992 and 2005, infrastructure and corporate investment subsidies had a negative net impact on regional economic growth and convergence. This result is robust to both the specification of spatially weighted control variables and the use of instrumental variable techniques to control for the endogeneity of subsidies. Our results suggest that regional redistribution was ineffective, potentially due to a lack of spatial concentration to create growth poles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate to what extent convergence in production levels per worker has been achieved in Germany since unification. To this end, we model the distribution of GDP per employee across German districts using two-component normal mixtures. While in the first year after unification, the two-component distributions were clearly separated and bimodal, corresponding to the East and West German districts, respectively, in the following years they started to merge showing only one mode. Still, using the recently developed EM-test for homogeneity in normal mixtures, the hypothesis of just a single normal component for the whole distribution is clearly rejected for all years. A Posterior analysis shows that about a third of the East German districts were assigned to the richer component in 2006, thus catching up to levels of the West. The growth rate of a mover district is about 1% point higher than the growth rate of a non-mover district which had the same initial level of GDP per employee. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The French Revolution had a momentous impact on neighboring countries. It removed the legal and economic barriers protecting oligarchies, established the principle of equality before the law, and prepared economies for the new industrial opportunities of the second half of the 19th century. We present within-Germany evidence on the long-run implications of these institutional reforms. Occupied areas appear to have experienced more rapid urbanization growth, especially after 1850. A two-stage least squares strategy provides evidence consistent with the hypothesis that the reforms instigated by the French had a positive impact on growth. JEL: N13, N43, O47 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rising focus of politicians as well as scientists in the EU on the large urban agglomerations as centres of economic growth is accompanied by political efforts to identify and to demarcate such agglomerations under the label ‘metropolitan regions’. This study develops a theoretical framework broaching the issue of cooperation between municipalities from the perspective of regional economics as well as political science. The framework is applied to the empirical case of the polycentric metropolitan region of the ‘Saxony triangle’ in east Germany. The results show that various intervening factors prevent intense co-operation between the actors in the region. Policy implications and conclusions for future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Consumer research has extensively analysed psychological determinants of customer satisfaction. As macro-level customer satisfaction data were not available until recently, researchers have only taken first steps towards analysing economic determinants of customer satisfaction. Based on a more complex conceptual framework and on data from Germany and Japan, this article examines how economic processes influence the perceived value of goods and services, quality expectations and customer satisfaction. Using principal component analysis, regression analysis and structural equation modelling, this study finds that perceived value is positively influenced by both economic growth and lagged economic expectations. Customer satisfaction is positively influenced by economic growth and negatively by current economic expectations, with half of the impact mediated by perceived value. Economic expectations positively influence expectations regarding the quality of goods and services. These results imply that consumer researchers should no longer ignore economic influences on consumer attitudes. Marketing managers are advised to be cautious not to misinterpret economic-induced variations in customer satisfaction as caused by corporate performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By 2008 China was expected to become the third largest economy in the world with a GDP slightly larger than that of Germany. Still, development challenges remained significant for China as per capita income was still very low and regionally based income disparities significant. Nevertheless, China's behavior on the world scene resembled increasingly that of the major developed economies as Chinese industries and companies used their new- found economic power around the world, it is useful to examine whether China's international behavior, i.e., its highly coordinated actions on the world scene, can best be defined as a strategy exercised by a unitary actor, or, rather, can be described as the visible tip of an iceberg, hiding a substantially more complex domestic governance scenario in which political and bureaucratic forces interact in complex ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyse the relationship between functional income distribution and economic growth in Austria, France, Germany, the Netherlands, the UK and the USA from 1960 until 2005. The analysis is based on a demand-driven distribution and growth model for an open economy inspired by Bhaduri and Marglin, which allows for either profit- or wage-led growth. We find that growth in France, Germany, the UK and the USA has been wage-led, whereas Austria and the Netherlands have been profit-led. In the case of Austria a domestically wage-led economy changes to profit-led when including the effect of distribution on external trade. The Netherlands, however, are already profit-led without external trade. Our results so far only partially confirm Bhaduri and Marglin's theoretical conclusion that wage-led growth becomes less feasible when the effects of distribution on foreign trade are taken into account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the impact of EU structural policy on the economic development of German regions between 1995 and 2004. In this period East-German regions have converged, while regional disparities have been increasing in West-Germany. In addition East-German have caught up with poor western regions. However the overall gap between rich and poor has risen. Economic theory describes a trade-off between regional convergence and aggregate growth. Our empirical findings support this hypothesis. It is shown that the EU's regional transfers speed up convergence, but have a negative impact on long-run aggregate growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a world dominated by oil, each country has to design its own energy policy to cope with increasingly scarce stocks of this fossil fuel. Particularly, the United States, France and Germany engaged into significantly different paths coping with challenging constraints such as ensuring economic growth, security of energy supply, and respect of the environment. The impact of these energy policies on the development of renewable energies has been assessed by analyzing each national policy from the economic, political, and technological standpoints. The results of this study provides some explanations of tactical moves made by these energy hungry economies to cope with the increasing pressure put on the oil supply market and to prepare for a future where green energies are bound to play an increasingly important role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economists were long unaware of the influence of knowledge upon the growth process. With theories of human capital and theories of endogenous growth, knowledge gained a central position in the growth process. However, this has not been proved in many industrialized countries. The nature of the relations between education and growth is hence far from having been perfectly determined. It is therefore of interest to examine the links between education and economic growth. From this point of view, three questions are addressed. Does higher education play a part in the growth process? Which sector of education is involved? Is its role the same in different countries? Using the notion of causality developed by Granger, the relationship between higher education and economic growth is compared in France and Germany before the Second World War. The results show that higher education has an influence on gross domestic product but only in the case of France. Germany does not seem to obey the dominant theory whereby education is the cause of growth. Moreover, economic growth increases the number of students in Germany. This is consistent with the idea that education is a growth-driven accompanying investment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In knowledge-based economies the effective use of new knowledge is the most important determinant of economic growth, and the capacity to generate and diffuse innovation forms the basis of comparative advantages. Transaction costs are the main reason why new knowledge takes so much time to spread around. Since clusters attract new ideas more easily, transaction costs may also cause regional divergence. European diffusion policies should therefore aim to minimize transaction costs for exchanging knowledge. It is proposed that this could be done by supporting extra-legal contractual relations guaranteed by third parties and by building up a rating system for trustworthiness of transaction partners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on recent trends in the literature of German economics. No shortcut is open to the reviewer of economic literature written in German. Though most of the writing naturally comes from Germany, accuracy would require the constant use of such clumsy phrases as "economic theory in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland" or "economic theory in the German-speaking countries." To simplify matters the word German frequently needs to stand for developments in all three countries. It would be much easier for the reviewer of current economic thinking in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland to arrange his material if there were any clear-cut "schools" that originated in these countries in the postwar period. At the turn of the century the "Austrian school," the German "historical school," the "Kathedersozialisten," the intense Marxist controversy, outside the universities, would have provided obvious starting points for a panorama of German economic theory. Today there are no such definite German "schools," neoliberalism perhaps being the only exception. But neoliberalism has little to offer in the field of economic theory that is new. The main stress of the neoliberal writings lies on programmatic aspects.

The article compares the development of gross domestic product (GDP) quality in Germany and the Czech Republic. Also cited are the relationship between GDP growth rate and the increase in labor, capital and technological developments, and the factors used in the comparison like the total input factor (TIF) and total factor productivity (TFP).