Dauerhafter vertikaler Finanzstreit zwischen Bund und Ländern

In 2009, the German federal parliament (“Bundestag”) and the German federal council (“Bundesrat”) reassigned the German vehicle tax from the level of Laender to the federal level (“Bund”). The new Article 106b of the German basic law contents permanent vertical “compensation amounts” from the federal level to the level of Laender. It has created a new vertical financial flow between the Bund and the Laender. This change in the architecture of the German federal system of financial relations must be analysed in the context of permanent fiscal disputes between the Bund and the Laender. The author shows the fiscal outcomes for the Laender budgets in recent years and the meaning in the context of further changes of vertical fiscal relations in context of the agreement with the Laender and the Bund on the reform of the federal fiscal equalisation scheme from 2020.     

Inequality,Mobility, Real Earnings,and Real Anger

Understanding the anger among the electorate right now requires an examination of the relevant economic trends. Inequality has increased and real wage growth has been limited for the median worker, as the relationship between productivity and wages has broken down. Measures of wealth inequality have outstripped those for incomes. Higher levels of inequality are correlated with less upward mobility over the life span, have potential costly macro-growth impacts, and contribute to “sticky” poverty rates which hurt child outcomes. Even in recent decades, though, periods of full employment have seen advances in real earnings. Thus, to reconnect growth and more broadly shared prosperity we need full employment, better-targeted manufacturing policy, a strengthened safety net, a higher minimum wage, access to quality preschool, and reduced mobility barriers.     

Einkommens- und Vermögensverteilung — zu ungleich?

The distribution of income and wealth in Germany grew increasingly unequal until the beginning of the financial crisis. But inequality has not risen in either Germany or Switzerland since 2005. Nevertheless, Germans overestimate inequality. The German gap between reality and perception of inequality is important to investigate, as the subjective assessment of inequality influences redistribution preferences. Rising inequality may damage social stability and democracy, but it is unclear whether economists are able to assess a “proper and just” distribution. Interdependencies are discussed: Does a more equal distribution create negative effects on economic growth? How does Germany rank internationally with regard to distribution? Social mobility rates differ substantially across countries; what are the implications for economic policy?     

The decline and fall of US foreign aid

Foreign aid, once hailed as “the most unsordid act in history”, is in deep trouble. Despite the exhortations of the Pearson Report¹, the call for sweeping reform by various governmental commissions and the annual plea to Congress of the Agency for International Development (AID), economic assistance is rapidly declining, and the future looks even bleaker.     

四川省崇州市“农业共营制”的创新及成效

中国共产党第十九次全国代表大会报告指出要实施乡村振兴战略,比以往政策文件更加坚定地表述必须坚守的重大原则主要是巩固和完善农村基本经营制度。本文主要研究四川省崇州市的农业经营制度的探索——“农业共营制”,探寻“农业共营制”的演变,从“三权分置”的角度分析“农业共营制”在所有权、承包权、经营权方面取得的创新,同时分析出“农业共营制”带来的成效,最后提出相应的发展建议进行总结。研究四川省崇州市“农业共营制”的创新及成效,有利于探索四川省农业经营改革的方向,探索我国实现乡村振兴发展的新路径。     

推动消费升级 引领经济发展——创新江苏消费经济发展新阶段

2018年9月,中共中央、国务院联合发布《关于完善促进消费体制机制,进一步激发居民消费潜力的若干意见》文件。文件根据习近平中国特色社会主义思想,认为“消费是最终需求,既是生产的最终目的和动力,也是人民对美好生活需要的直接体现。”对消费在国民经济中的重要作用进行了深入阐述,将扩大和升级消费放在战略高度来进行谋划和部署,为今后如何进一步发展国民消费指明了前进方向。改革开放以来,江苏省的消费与全国一样发生了巨大变化,但是我们也应看到,江苏消费虽然增长较快,但是与党和国家的要求还存在一定的差距,消费能力、消费意愿、消费供给消费三要素的发展不充分,在消费水平、消费规模和消费结构等方面还存在一定的问题,在满足人民日益增长的需要方面还需要继续努力。特别是在推动江苏经济发展上要发挥更大的作用,通过消费对经济的调节、引领、带动机制促进江苏经济创新发展。因此,我们要继续贯彻党和国家“两个一百年”、江苏率先小康的“强富美高”战略目标,采取得力措施来解决消费矛盾,激发居民消费潜力,通过消费升级使江苏消费和经济均上升到一个新阶段。     

国企分类改革下国有出资人模式的重构

分类改革是我国此轮国企改革的核心。要实现分类改革的目标，必须对关乎国企管理体制的国有出资人模式进行重新审视。我国国有出资人模式主要有集权模式和分权模式两种。但无论是以国资委为代表的集权出资模式，还是以行业或地域为标准的分权出资模式，其主要缺陷在于没有回应国企分类改革的要求，没有区分商业类国企与公益类国企而分别构建出资人制度。实际上，在国企分类改革下，有必要确立集权模式与双重模式并行的混合出资人模式。针对商业类国企采国资委集权出资模式，由国资委专司“管资本”，剥离其监管企业的职能；而针对公益类国企采功能双重出资模式，由多个部门分工协作，既“管资本”也“管企业”，实现有效监管的职能。     

Soziale Lage — Was sind die drängendsten Probleme?

Democracy seems to be at risk. People elect populists and autocrats, who offer simple solutions to social problems. Often, these problems are not even real ones but are only perceived as such. Economists have measures to determine which problems are fact-based, but they cannot draw a clear distinction between academic analysis and normative demand. If politics pursues a correction of a market outcome, any normative criteria other than efficiency have to be outlined explicitly. Nevertheless, some authors consider inequality one of the central contemporary social and economic challenges. Marcel Fratzscher emphasises that the solution is not found in more redistribution via taxes and transfers, but rather through greater equality of opportunity and social and educational mobility. Bert Rürup thinks that to stabilise the acceptance of the compulsory pension scheme, the dominance of the equivalence principle should be reduced. Further, the existence of different federal subsidy schemes should be replaced by a fixed federal contribution rate in alignment with the pension expenditures. In an international comparison, the fiscal burden for households with small and mid-level earned incomes is exceptionally high in Germany. In order to reduce this burden, Rürup suggests a contribution-free allowance for the social insurance contributions.     

Health as a Means Towards Profitable Ends: mHealth Apps,User Autonomy,and Unfair Commercial Practices

In this article, we discuss mHealth apps and their potential to influence the user’s behaviour in increasingly persuasive ways. More specifically, we call attention to the fact that mHealth apps often seek to not only influence the health behaviour of users but also their economic behaviour by merging health and commercial content in ways that are hard to detect. We argue that (1) such merging of health and commercial content raises specific questions concerning the autonomy of mHealth app users, and (2) consumer law offers a promising legal lens to address questions concerning user protection in this context. Based on an empirically informed ethical analysis of autonomy, we develop a fine-grained framework that incorporates three different requirements for autonomy that we call “independence,” “authenticity,” and “options.” This framework also differentiates between three different stages of mHealth app use, namely installing, starting to use, and continuing to use an app. As a result, user autonomy can be analysed in a nuanced and precise manner. Since the concept of autonomy plays a prominent, yet poorly understood role in unfair commercial practice law, we utilize the ethical analysis of autonomy to guide our legal analysis of the proper application of unfair commercial practice law in the mHealth app domain.     

Thoughts about Monetary and Fiscal Policy in a Postinflation World

There is a cultural lag in economic policy, particularly when it comes to inflation. Should inflation continue to be a concern, or is the new “normal” one in which inflation is low on the list of threats? In particular, central banks should focus on their original mission of ensuring financial stability and recognize that monetary accommodation is likely to continue to be appropriate. Budget policy, too, must play a role in promoting economic health—but expenditures should be shifted toward investment that increases productivity rather than consumption. Also, the federal tax codes and entitlements should be restructured so that they promote rather than impede growth. Finally, it is important to guard against institutions and individuals that have enormous financial power using that power to gain short-run advantage for themselves at the expense of long-term stability and prosperity for all.     

Verteilung energiewendebedingter Netzkosten — allein eine Frage der Fairness?

In Germany there is an intensive debate regarding the allocation of the network costs caused by the German energy transition (“Energiewende”). The discussion is mainly driven by the growing divergence of network tariffs among the federal states. This article analyses the actual reform of the cost allocation for transmission system operators and suggests a possible general change in the system of cost allocation for the calculation of network fees. Furthermore, it shows additional possibilities to increase the cost orientation within the tariffs for electricity distribution.     

Differential Mode of Status: Theoretical Perspectives and an Analysis on Its Impact on Employee Engagement

With the gradual deepening of China’s economic reform, “differential mode of status,” which is created by the dual-track employment system in state-owned enterprises, has become a major hindrance for employees’ enthusiasm and initiative in workplaces. Drawing upon the “differential mode of status” theory, this paper firstly explores the internal relationships among “differential mode of status,” employees’ perception of fairness and sense of belonging, and employee engagement. Then the mechanism of “differential mode of status” influencing employee engagement is discussed. Lastly, coping strategies are brought forward based on the actual situation of low work devotion especially in China’s state-owned enterprises.     

Was bringt die Anreizregulierung „2.1“?

After lengthy consultations, the German government has agreed to reform the existing incentive regulation ordinance (“Anreizregulierungsverordung”). Essential for the regulation of power and gas network operators, this ordinance determines the companies’ economic framework by defining their revenue options. The amendments which focus on improving investment conditions constitute a significant change towards a more cost-oriented system for investments. In addition, other important details have also been changed.     

Deutschlands hohe Ungleichheit verursacht wirtschaftlichen Schaden

“Welfare for everyone”, according to former chancellor and economics minister Ludwig Erhard, has been the credo of Germany’s economic and social policy for the past 60 years. However, Germany is increasingly failing to achieve this objective.Germany is a country of enormous inequality – income, wealth and opportunities are distributed more unequally in Germany than in almost any other industrialised country. This inequality imposes huge economic costs for Germany, as evidenced by lower economic growth and declines in other indicators of well-being. And it has triggered a harmful fight among groups of society for public resources. This fight will further intensify with the dramatic changes Germany is currently undergoing, from demographic change to globalisation to the migration challenge. The main culprit for the high and rising inequality is not a lack of public redistribution of income and wealth, but rather the unusually high inequality of opportunity, through which an ever higher share of citizens is deprived of the chance to develop and use their talents and skills. Such barriers have become massive, beginning already in early childhood.     

科技金融苏州模式遇到的问题及对策分析

党的十九大报告确定了现代化经济体系的战略布局,其中强调“科技创新与现代金融”的协调发展,而此战略的实施离不开科技与金融的生态融合。近年来,苏州积极探索科技金融工作新机制和新模式,进一步发挥科技金融促进科技创新能力提升的倍增效应,本文对此进行探讨。     

Relative Intragenerational Economic Mobility: A Cross-Period Analysis from 1968 to 2009

Recent debate about income inequality has occurred with good reason, as changes in income inequality are critically important for long-term economic prosperity, business profitability, and particularly for the quality and accessibility of labor in the market today. However, what is equally important and less discussed is economic mobility, or the capacity of an individual or a family to improve their financial standing, specifically as it relates to income and wealth. In this paper, we examine statistics on economic mobility in the United States. Our findings suggest that while economic mobility still exists, the likelihood of a household making a large jump out of poverty and into wealth declined from 1999 to 2009. The message of our findings to policymakers is that, rather than a redistribution of wealth from the top of the income distribution to the bottom, what is really needed is broader access to affordable education, better essential nutrition, more stable early childhood development experiences, and basic financial literacy training for all income groups.     

Oil prices and world inflation

In this paper we attempt to address the nature of the causal relationships between oil prices and U.S. inflation. We use a procedure developed by Granger to assess “causality” or, more precisely stated, “informativeness.” Our results confirm that higher oil prices have increased the U.S. WPI. Our results also support OPEC's contention that their price increases have in part been a result of worldwide inflation.     

Neuordnung der Besteuerungskompetenzen bei der Einkommensteuer

The controversies over the reform of the German intergovernmental fiscal equalisation system generally concern the equalisation formula at the last step of the tax-sharing system. In order to achieve a financial architecture that truly corresponds with the tasks of the federal government, the states and the municipalities, the tax-sharing schedules also need to be reconsidered. To share the personal income tax according to proportional tax rates for the states and municipalities and to leave the progressive tax rates to the federal level would not only deliver horizontally more equal tax revenues for the sub-federal tiers of government but also increase the vertical flexibility of tax distribution if the federal and state governments then had the right to change “their” tax rates without the approval of the Bundesrat or Bundestag.     

In Search of System Understanding and Control

Technology, standardization, and global integration have created a world of ever-increasing financial and economic complexity. However, measurement and modeling have not kept pace with these developments: new approaches to recognize and embrace the complexity of an open social-economic system are necessary. In particular, it is necessary to address five fundamental challenges to system modeling and forward-looking examinations of human behavior: fallibility, reflexivity, time inconsistency, domain inconsistency, and the “Lucas critique.” It is of particular importance to recognize that human life operates in an integrated domain of economic, political, spiritual, family, social, and cultural aspects. To support the needs of analysis, new types of data are necessary. The article presents several specific areas in which modeling and measurement must be improved to meet the demands for economic analysis in the 21st century.     

“Not Buying Cottage Cheese”: Motivations for Consumer Protest-the Case of the 2011 Protest in Israel

The 2011 Israeli consumer protest was groundbreaking: It enjoyed mass public support and had dramatic influence on the behaviour of Israeli companies and consumers alike. Most observers view this protest as a reaction to economic inequality in Israeli society, the increased cost of living, and public antipathy towards large businesses and the wealthy elite controlling them. However, this overlooks the wider political and cultural context: the decline in traditional political participation and the growing “openness” of brands to consumers, which can be referred to as the “prosumption turn.” By specifically analyzing the 2011 consumer protest against Israeli dairy companies, this article demonstrates how motivations for a consumerist act (boycott or buycott) can be linked to a broader, indirect context.