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Recent research in economic history has found that mortgage debt in relation to GDP has taken off in the historical long run ("great mortgaging"), as growing banking assets have been redirected into mortgage credit. This paper maps the parallel long-run investment history of private (life) insurance as the much overlooked second pillar of the financial system. Drawing on in-depth studies of the US and Germany, it finds that a "great de-mortgaging" took place in insurers' portfolios, with mortgages falling from up to 90 percent in the 19th century to below 5 percent today in favor of fixed-income securities. A parallel shift to secondary mortgage bonds has hardly offset this decline, while direct real estate remained largely a residual investment class. Banks' great mortgaging is thus partly an institutional substitution effect. The paper sees insurers' asset shift itself as mainly driven by long-run changes in capital demand and competition with banks and pension funds. It extends these findings to other long-term institutional investors and other OECD countries in the historical long run. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Departing from research on Westphalian leases between 1600 and 1900 the paper discusses the lease market of and price determination on three Westphalian estates. While economic history approaches suppose that leases can be seen as market relations and are therefore useful indicators to measure agricultural productivity, a more anthropological perspective emphasises the social relations between lessor (here: noble estate owner) and leaseholders. The choice of an adequate perspective has significant implications for research on agricultural productivity based on rents and leases. Our results indicate that the contractual arrangement of leasehold (well defined duration, announcement, auctions) was used to achieve the highest possible leases. However, at least until the 1830s, demand for leasehold land was rather low and leaseholders could benefit from a lack of competition. Price determination of leases resulted in rents below the Ricardian rent. Therefore, we argue that important assumptions of the established price approach, which uses leases as proxies for productivity, are not met and the analysis of agricultural productivity requires additional evidence on the leaseholder's income and profit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whereas initially physical capital and later, knowledge capital were viewed as crucial for growth, more recently a very different factor, entrepreneurship capital, has emerged as a driving force of economic growth. In this paper, we define a region's capacity to create new firms start-ups as the region's entrepreneurship capital. We then investigate the local embeddedness of this variable and which variables have an impact on this variable. Using data for Germany, we find that knowledge-based entrepreneurship capital is driven by local levels of knowledge creation and the acceptance of new ideas, indicating that local knowledge flows play an important role. Low-tech entrepreneurship capital is rather increased by regional unemployment and driven by direct incentives such as subsidies. All three measures are locally clustered, indicating that indeed, entrepreneurship capital is a phenomenon that is driven by local culture, and is therefore locally bounded. Mientras que inicialmente el capital físico, y posteriormente el capital conocimiento, fue considerado crucial para el crecimiento, más recientemente un factor muy diferente, el capital empresarial de espíritu emprendedor ( entrepreneurship capital), ha surgido como una fuerza impulsora de crecimiento económico. En este artículo, definimos como capital empresarial emprendedor la capacidad de una región para originar la puesta en marcha de nuevas empresas. A continuación investigamos el arraigo local de esta variable y las variables que tienen un impacto sobre esta variable. Usando datos de Alemania, hallamos que el capital empresarial emprendedor basado en el conocimiento está motivado por niveles locales de creación de conocimiento y la aceptación de nuevas ideas, indicando que los flujos de conocimiento local juegan un papel importante. El capital empresarial emprendedor basado en bajas tecnologías aumenta con el desempleo regional y está motivado por incentivos directos como subsidios. Las tres variables están agrupadas localmente ( locally clustered), indicando que sin duda el capital empresarial emprendedor es un fenómeno motivado por la cultura local, y por tanto atribuible a una localidad. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines whether the subjective well-being of migrants is responsive to fluctuations in macroeconomic conditions in their country of origin. Using the German Socio-Economic Panel for the years 1984 to 2009 and macroeconomic variables for 24 countries of origin, we exploit countryyear variation for identification of the effect and panel data to control for migrants' observed and unobserved characteristics. We find strong evidence that migrants' well-being responds negatively to an increase in the GDPof their home country. That is, migrants seem to regard home countries as natural comparators, which grounds the idea of relative deprivation underlying the decision to migrate. The effect declines with years-since-migration and with the degree of assimilation in Germany. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Berlin Mitte is one of the most interesting parts of the city, located in the core of Berlin where every corner and stone can tell a story. Mitte, the cultural center of Berlin is also known as the political and economic hub of Berlin. This paper explores the urban and historical image of two important parts of Berlin Mitte district: Alexanderplatz and Friedrichstaße. Friedrichstraße, as the main shopping and business street in this area, was planned with great attention by Prussian authorities, while the area around Alexanderplatz grew up randomly and its streets did not follow any special urban patterns. All potential international investors wanted to come to Friedrichstraße after the fall of the Wall, while Alexanderplatz was not so attractive to them. Many famous architects took part in numerous competitions regarding urban planning reconstructions of the famous Alex throughout the 20th century. These two areas of the Mitte district, Alexanderplatz and Friedrichstaße, are very important for contemporary Berlin and both areas have different problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In early modern Brandenburg-Prussia, feudal lords (Gutsherren) were primarily the owners of both large estates that required peasant labor and large forests from which they were obligated to supply their peasants with life's necessities. This paper examines the practice of timber granting to peasants in the sovereign demesnes of the Kurmark Brandenburg from 1650 to 1850. To challenge the general understanding that peasants both remained dependent on timber grants and abused them until approximately 1800, this paper investigates the increases in peasants' share of the building costs for their farmsteads and the positive effects of timber regulations in the eighteenth century, including self-regulation by peasants. In addition, while previous studies have accentuated the peasants' thefts of wood after losing their entitlements to the lords' forests due to the reform legislation of the early nineteenth century, this paper presents cases in which peasants successfully retained their entitlements, gained payment for timber grants, or afforested their own land. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to the literature on the weakness of modern pay-as-you-go social security systems in financing pensions by taking a business and economic historical perspective on the issue. It focuses on Prussian Knappschaften (plural ofKnappschaft), which provided miners with compulsory invalidity and implicit old-age insurance, and studies the period from 1854 to 1913. Knappschaften used the pay-as-you-go mechanism, and, in the long term, came under financial pressure from the rising number of pensioners. The question to be answered is whether Knappschaften were able to offer cohorts of miners entering the system at different times the same implicit rates of return. Did Knappschaften provide an intergenerationally sustainable policy, or did adjustments of contributions and other parameters decrease the dividend for insured miners over time? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper looks at the phenomenon of migrant workers who emigrated to Western European countries after World War II. The labor demands created by the economic reconstruction of these countries, most notably Great Britain, West Germany, France, Switzerland, the Benelux countries, Sweden and Austria, coupled with low birth rates and high death rates, made it necessary for them to hire immigrant workers. On the other hand, poor economic conditions, few employment opportunities and a yearning for a higher standard of living drove workers from Italy, Spain, Portugal, Turkey, Yugoslavia, Greece, Ireland, Finland and North Africa to seek work abroad. These temporary migrant workers represent a link between their countries of origin and their host countries, and, as a group of people maintaining links with their native countries, they can also be considered their countries' diaspora. However, considering the temporary nature of their residence abroad, it is questionable whether they actually are a diaspora. It is for this reason that the paper juxtaposes the phenomena of the diaspora and temporary migrant workers in order to analyze the question of whether, when and how these workers become a diaspora. In particular, it focuses on migrant workers from Yugoslavia, usually referred to as "gastarbajteri" (gastarbeiter), who in the 1960s and 1970s migrated mostly to West Germany, Austria, Australia, France and Switzerland, and on their political treatment by the Yugoslav state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information about the book "Perspectives on Modern German Economic History and Policy," by Knut Borchardt, translated by Peter Lambert. This book consists of eleven essays which address the history of German economic development in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The research papers examine protectionism in historical perspective, the question of capital shortage in the first half of the nineteenth century in Germany, regional variations in growth in Germany in the nineteenth century with particular reference to the west-east developmental gradient, investment in education and instruction in the nineteenth century, and changes in the phenomenon of the business cycle over the last hundred years, among others.

The article presents information about the book "German Industry and German Industrialisation: Essays in German Economic and Business History in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century," by W.R. Lee. This book consists of ten papers which examine German economic and business history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It focuses on some recent issues and debates in the modern historiography of German industrial development.

Recent studies provide clear evidence that the quality of telecommunications infrastructure has strong impacts on economic growth. Especially in Germany there is a controversial debate how to stimulate telecommunications investment to foster the introduction of Next Generation Networks. To find appropriate policies to enhance infrastructure investment one has to get a thorough understanding of the determinants of infrastructure investment. Using a panel consisting of 30 OECD countries for the period 1990 to 2011 and taking account of possible non-stationarities in aggregate data, we investigate the main drivers of telecommunications investment on an aggregate level applying dynamic panel data methods. Our main finding is an inverted U-shaped relationship between per capita telecommunications investment and competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In many cases decision-makers apparently do not adapt as fast as expected to changing economic conditions. This is also the case for the conversion of farm land to short rotation coppice. From an economic point of view, short rotation coppice has become more interesting in the last few years. Nevertheless, farm land still is rarely used to grow this quite unknown crop. Several explanatory approaches (e.g., traditionalistic behavior and risk aversion) are currently discussed in order to explain this behavior. A relatively new explanatory approach is the Real Options Approach. The Real Options Approach uses a comprehensive dynamic-stochastic model that combines the uncertainty of investment returns, the sunk costs, and the temporal flexibility of the investment implementation. The quintessence of the Real Options Approach is that—compared to the Classical Investment Theory—the investment triggers will be shifted upwards if investments involve intertemporal opportunity costs. This paper develops a real options model which allows the determination of triggers on the basis of realistic assumptions. We examined when farmers, who only dispose of sandy soils with little water-storing capacity, should convert set-aside land to short rotation coppice. The results show that farmers should not convert until the present value of the investment returns exceeds the investment costs considerably. Thus, they confirm the empirically observed reluctance in conversion. Furthermore, it turned out that the magnitude of the difference between the Classical Investment Theory and the Real Options Approach depends heavily on the type of stochastic process that underlies the investment returns. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: In this paper, we discuss the causal relationship between growth of bank assets and economic performance (economic growth, capital accumulation, productivity). We analyze new data for German banking (Burhop, C., 2002. Die Entwicklung der deutschen Aktienkreditbanken von 1848 bis 1913: Quantifizierungsversuche. Bankhistorisches Archiv 28, 103–128.) and improved national accounting data (Burhop, C., Wolff, G.B., 2005. A compromise estimate of Germany’s Net National Product 1851–1913 and its relevance for economic growth and cycles. forthcoming, Journal of Economic History.) with several recent VAR/VEC based causality tests. Only weak evidence for a causal influence of banks on economic performance on a nation-wide level is detected. On the other hand, the results support the bank-led growth hypothesis for the modern sector of the German economy. In particular, joint-stock credit banks positively influenced capital formation during the early decades of Germany’s industrialization. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The widely accepted belief in a Production Era implies that serious and sophisticated marketing is a recent phenomenon. Analyzing conditions in Britain, Germany, and the United States, the author shows that the Production Era concept obscures the extent and level of development of earlier marketing practice, as do the Sales Era and Marketing Era concepts. A new model of marketing's evolution is used to propose a more accurate periodization of modern marketing's development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on the book "European Economies Since the Second World War," edited by Bernard J. Foley. The book provides analyses of the postwar economic history of a number of European economies. The book also address the evolution of the British economy, West Germany, France, Italy, and others. In addition to that, the article presents information on various other features of the book.

Throughout the late 1920s, German coal mining saw an exceptional surge in labour productivity, led by the performance of the Ruhr coal mines. It is commonly accepted in the relevant literature that the economy-wide 'rationalization boom' explains that pattern. This study tests the related hypothesis that 'negative rationalization', in the form of a massive wave of mine closures over the period 1924-9, played a significant role in stimulating aggregate labour productivity in the Ruhr coal district. Using an original dataset for the totality of Ruhr coal mines, the causes of productivity change over the broader period 1913-38 are identified, using the decomposition method of Foster, Haltiwanger, and Krizan. Results suggest that labour productivity was driven largely by improvements at individual mines, attributable to the intensified mechanization of underground operations. In sharp contrast, turnover effects were marginal, overall, compared to the effects stemming from the producer dynamics among surviving mines. Thus, the practical productivity implications of mine closures during the rationalization boom are negligible and overrated in the literature. These findings indicate the necessity of testing the relative importance of 'negative rationalization' in the form of plant closures in other branches of the Weimar economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many public pension insurance schemes today use the pay-as-you-go financing mechanism. This mechanism is vulnerable to an ageing population, which puts pressure on the intergenerational contract implicit in these schemes and raises the question as to how they might be eroded. This is not a new problem, and to put it into historical perspective, this article studies the intergenerational contract that formed the core of the Prussian miners' invalidity insurance in the nineteenth and the early twentieth century (1861-1920). With the so-called Knappschaften, miners relied on what was probably the most comprehensive and advanced occupational pension system existing in Germany around the time when Bismarckian social insurance was established. Financed via the pay-as-you-go mechanism, the miners' pension funds faced stress from their ageing memberships early on, and this potentially undermined their ability to maintain intergenerationally fair pensions. In order to examine whether or not the intergenerational contract among German miners showed signs of erosion, we look at the Knappschaftens' profitability, as measured by actual and promised internal rates of return. This article shows that the intergenerational contract indeed weakened over time unless miners' funds were large and continued to grow, and that a pension reform in 1906 served to stabilize generosity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, a widespread consensus has emerged about the necessity of establishing bridges between quantitative and qualitative approaches to empirical research in political science. In this article, we discuss the use of the synthetic control method as a way to bridge the quantitative/qualitative divide in comparative politics. The synthetic control method provides a systematic way to choose comparison units in comparative case studies. This systematization opens the door to precise quantitative inference in small-sample comparative studies, without precluding the application of qualitative approaches. Borrowing the expression from Sidney Tarrow, the synthetic control method allows researchers to put "qualitative flesh on quantitative bones." We illustrate the main ideas behind the synthetic control method by estimating the economic impact of the 1990 German reunification on West Germany. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why did imitations of Raiffeisen's rural cooperative savings and loans associations work well in some European countries, but fail in others? This article considers the example of Raiffeisenism in Ireland and in the Netherlands. Raiffeisen banks arrived in both places at the same time, but had drastically different fates. In Ireland they were almost wiped out by the early 1920s, while in the Netherlands they proved to be a long-lasting institutional transplant. Raiffeisen banks were successful in the Netherlands because they operated in niche markets with few competitors, while rural financial markets in Ireland were unsegmented and populated by long-established incumbents, leaving little room for new players, whatever their institutional advantages. Dutch Raiffeisen banks were largely self-financing, closely integrated into the wider rural economy, and able to take advantage of economic and religious divisions in rural society. Their Irish counterparts were not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyze the similarities and differences in terms of the demographic, social, political and economic situation of the two Germanies and the two Koreas before unification. Based on the German experience, we inquire whether there is room for economic policy unification strategies. An important issue is the degree of international openness which, under "stone-age" type conditions, is much lower in North Korea than it ever was in East Germany. This may create additional adjustment costs, especially if institutions change. We go on by showing how transition and integration interact in a potential unification process based on the World Bank Revised Minimum Standard Model (RMSM) and the Salter-Swan-Meade model. In doing so, we relate the macro and external impacts on an open economy to its micro-sectoral structural dynamics. Theoretical findings and evidence from Germany suggest that limits to accelerating unification from an economic perspective are important factors to take into account. We then consider unification as an "investment" and track down the (by-and-large immediate to medium-term) costs and the (by-and-large long-term) benefits of retooling a retarded communist economy. We conclude that, from a South-Korean perspective, Korean unification will become much more expensive than German unification. This may pose severe political and strategic problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article investigates a sample of 180 technology licensing contracts closed by German chemical, pharmaceutical, and electrical engineering companies between 1880 and 1913. The empirical results suggest that strategic behaviour is relevant for the design of licensing contracts, whereas inventor moral hazard and risk aversion of licensor or licensee seem to be less important. Moreover, the results suggest that uncertainty regarding the profitability of licensed technology influenced the design of licensing contracts. More specifically, profit-sharing agreements or producer milestones were often included in licensing contracts to solve this kind of problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today, German machine toolmakers accuse their Chinese competitors of violating patent rights and imitating German technology. A century ago, German machine toolmakers used the same methods to imitate American technology. To understand the dynamics of this catching-up process, we use patent statistics to analyze firms’ activities between 1877 and 1932. We show that German firms deployed imitating strategies in the late nineteenth century and the 1920s to catch-up to their American competitors. The German administration supported this strategy by stipulating a patent law that discriminated against foreign patent holders and by delaying the granting of patents to foreign applicants. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Investors in new stock issues in Germany in the 1880s experienced low spreads between the price they paid for stock and the price at which they could sell the stock in the market. Stock issuing companies paid substantial fees to underwriting banks, and these costs increased with the underwriter's market share. Bank's faced lower issuing costs than did nonfinancial firms. These patterns are consistent with a situation in which underwriters exploited their access to better information (agency problems) and had market power, but do not support the supposed lemons problems that motivated the imposition of stringent regulations in 1896. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The German parliament in the Weimar Republic was very instable and governments did not last long. Historical research has tried to determine what caused this instability. Those historical hypotheses are re-examined by studying a completely new dataset covering 489 roll-call-bills in the parliament during the 14 years in question. According to the findings of this study it is very unlikely that it was only the system, its conditions and its actors that caused instability and that the reasons rather have to be found outside parliament. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A central concern about immigration is the integration into the labour market, not only of the first generation but also of subsequent generations. Little comparative work exists for Europe's largest economies. France, Germany and the UK have all become, perhaps unwittingly, countries with large immigrant populations albeit with very different ethnic compositions. Today, the descendants of these immigrants live and work in their parents’ destination countries. This article presents and discusses comparative evidence on the performance of first and second-generation immigrants in these countries in terms of education, earnings and employment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the economic developments of some Organisation for Economic Co-operation & Development (OECD) countries. U.S. has experienced great difficulty of economic conditions after the value for housing mortgage weakened which resulted in the contraction in activity and deterioration of the labor market. Japan's economy dropped in commodity prices as well as its international financial that includes the exporting industry with rising unemployment rate projected throughout 2009. Germany was also affected in the export growth and fall in investment spending as well as weakness in the trading partner economies however, the country's disinflation rate increases the purchasing power of the previous wage settlements.

The article looks at the condition of Germany after World War II. It discusses what contemporary Russia may learn from the German post-war experience. The author demonstrates that in terms of institutional structure of society, the task of transition mainly consists in establishing the prerequisites for the differentiation of a subsystem economy from society. A brief outline of an interpretation of totalitarianism that understands Hitlerism and Stalinism as the result of a failed attempt of economic modernization is given.

The article focuses on some recent economic developments in various OECD countries. In the U.S. output growth has been strong while inflation outcomes have been favorable. Increase in house prices had negative impact on the household saving rate. In Japan domestic demand increased output growth in 2005. Exports are growing strongly in Germany. The economy of the country grew by 0.9 percent in 2005.

Focuses on the influence of German legal and economic history in the resistance of the country to the expansion of private antitrust enforcement. Implications of the resistance of Germany to the antitrust regulation; Emergence of an indigenous regulatory philosophy within the competition law of the nation; Perceptions regarding the assertions of sovereignty or territorial authority in international discourse regarding global competition regime.

In May 1927, the German central bank intervened indirectly to reduce lending to equity investors. The crash that followed ended the only stock market boom during Germany's relative stabilization 1924-1928. The evidence strongly suggests that the German central bank under Hjalmar Schacht was wrong to be concerned about stock prices—there was no bubble. Also, the Reichsbank was mistaken in its belief that a fall in the market would reduce the importance of short-term foreign borrowing and improve conditions in the money market. The misguided intervention had important real effects. Investment suffered, helping to tip Germany into depression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the economic and social conditions in East Germany in the 1990s. Significance of the signing of the Treaty of Unification between East and West Germany in October 1990; Predicted recession by economists; Comparison between the gross domestic product per capita of the East with that of the West.

This article focuses on the process of economic and political change in Germany in the nineteenth century. The early phase of German industrialization was associated with low urban growth rates. Only in the kingdom of Saxony and the area around Berlin was there a significant increase in urbanization. However, from the mid-nineteenth century onwards there was a marked expansion in urban growth, particularly in the Rhineland and Westphalia, and, to a lesser extent, in Silesia. The nineteenth century witnessed a marked growth in the state bureaucracy and few would dispute the claim that Germany was well administered. However, if the regional distribution of sectoral development lay at the heart of the mechanism of industrialization there seems little evidence to support the claim that economic advance was itself a by-product of state action. If the role of the state was supportive in individual areas, such as vocational training, the official promotion of exports in the late nineteenth century and regional industrialization policies were generally a failure.

The article focuses on the German banking crisis of 1931. The German interwar depression was much more severe than the crises which afflicted west European economies. Industrial production fell to 61 per cent of its 1929 level at the low point of the depression in 1932. The German banking crisis occurred not at the onset but in the middle of a general economic depression. In 1928 there were symptoms of a mild recession in German consumer industries, and from the middle of 1929 the production of heavy industry fell. There were signs of monetary crisis already in spring 1929, when a politically-induced foreign exchange run occurred during the meeting of the Paris Experts' Committee on reparations; the market feared that the experts would not be able to reach agreement on a new reparations plan. A similar run took place in September 1930, after the Nazi party did unexpectedly well in the Reichstag elections. In each case money flowed out of Germany; and in 1929 bank deposits in Germany fell.

The article describes the business cycle in Germany during the 1920s. The economic data are used to demonstrate that there was a credit shortage in the country at the onset of the 1926 and 1929 depressions. There were exogenously determined declines in imports of foreign capital during 1926 and 1929. The traditional view of the role of foreign capital is needed. The whole basis of the internal German economy was weak in the 1920s. The search for single-cause explanations of a downturn in economic activity raises the objection that the complex nature of economic interrelations involves a variety of elements.

Relying on Allensbach and Infratest data, it is asked if there is a relation between the perception of the general economic situation and the voting intention. Modern time series techniques are employed: Box-Jenkins analysis and Granger causality tests. The test results as well as ex post predictions show that voting intentions are strongly influenced by the perceived economic situation. Thus, the null hypothesis of no relationship between the variables cannot only be rejected by using classical econometric methods, as is done in previous studies, but also by employing modern time series procedures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the transformation of Berlin, Germany following unification in 1990. Proliferation of junk food and brands of consumer products in East German shops; Historical background on how Berlin became Germany's capital in 1871; Defiance of East Berliners superseding mutual curiosity with the West Berliners; Effects of unification on the city's economy.

This article analyzes the various trends in economic controls developed under National Socialism since 1933 in Germany. Economic controls under National Socialism have apparently evolved in terms of continuous adjustment to the exigencies of war economy, rather than as instruments of deliberately planned and executed policy. The period from 1933 to the end of 1936 represents a major transition stage, during which experimentation with various controls was at its height at the same time that the system of public works, carried over from the preceding regime, but incorporated in May 1933, in the First Four-Year Plan, was being adapted to war production, and the problems of industrial stability, debt conversion, and unemployment were being attacked in preparation for a more comprehensive program of war-preparedness. Beginning in 1935 the orientation of public works to the war program began in earnest with a shift to work projects more immediately related to armament production. for Water and Power. Centralization is evident in the utilization of the cartel as a major regulatory device, in growing business consolidation and merger, and in the development of new or the extension of old holding company structures.

This article discusses the economic conditions of Germany during mid-1948. Black-market and barter transactions which, along with trading at fixed prices under rationing and allocation controls, had characterized the Germany's exchange economy in the early postwar years. These things disappeared overnight and a homogeneous price system re-emerged. Most of the wartime controls, such as price controls and rationing, which had been continued under the occupation, were abolished with a view to restore a high degree of well-considered economic and fiscal policies. The success of these policies is reflected in Germany's remarkable economic and financial recovery. The primary factor in the striking upswing in Germany's current account position was sought out to be the improvement in the trade. The most potent factor in bringing about Germany's favorable balance-of-payments position has been the comparatively low prospensity to import, compared both with the pre-war years and with other industrial nations.

The article examines the prices, money and the distribution of goods in postwar Western Germany in 1940s. The economic efficiency of Western German state is limited by the decay of the body politic that advanced greatly during the leadership of Adolf Hitler and that cannot be considered as checked today. The physical recovery that has taken place has given the German society a new lease on life, but neither the new economic institutions nor the external aid that is fed to the system are significant to produce a healthy and peaceful community. The new markets do not necessarily encourage democracy and there is not enough democratic authority to assure balanced trading in the markets. The present experience only shows that the country's economy reacted to strong new stimuli after several years of great disorganization, and it proved once more its capacity to produce.

The article discusses the economic history of Germany from 1933 to 1939. The index of industrial production in the second quarter of 1933 was 3 percent above the lowest point of the depression. Other economic indices, such as gross national product, farm income, retail sales, and private capital investments, also show that in the spring of 1933 recovery had only begun. The relative efficiency of the various recovery measures were examined and the theoretical implications of the high tax policy were discussed. In discussing the reasons why Germany's preparations were not greater, it is necessary to separate political and military from economic factors. The latter supply us with the immediate reasons for Germany's unpreparedness; the former, with the more ultimate causes.

The article attempts to determine the solutions for the economic problem in Germany. It discusses the six possible solutions for the problem, of which only three solutions are seem to be realistic. One is the plan agreed upon by the Big Three in August 1945 at Potsdam. Second is against the Potsdam plan because of its alleged incompatibility with fairly interpreted German and European economic needs. Finally, to treat Germany it would consist in the perpetuation of its disruption.

The article focuses on the corporate developments of the Third Reich in Germany. It cites that enthusiastic exponents of a corporate state is at hand to act as engineers for uncharted future when the Third Reich is officially ushered. It is noted that there are reflected changes in economic conditions, development of the party system and class ideology based on the doctrines of Karl Marx during the last half of the nineteenth century until the World War I.