ASEAN as supplier of raw materials

This article offers an interesting survey of the ASEAN countries’ role as raw material suppliers to Western Germany and the EC, its history, present performance and future prospects. Some of this paper’s contents are very informative and surprising indeed.     

FDI,Technology Spillovers,and Wages

This study distinguishes multinational firm (MNE) technology‐spillover from learning effects. Whenever learning takes time, the model predicts that foreign investors deduct the economic value of learning from wages of inexperienced workers and add it to experienced ones to prevent them from moving to local competitors. Hence, the national wage bill is unaffected by the presence of MNEs. In contrast to learning, technology spillover effects occur whenever a worker with MNE experience contributes more to local firms' than to MNEs' productivity. In this case, experienced MNE workers are hired by indigenous firms and the host country obtains a welfare gain from the presence of MNEs.     

EEC’s association policy

In Part IV of the Treaty of Rome, Articles 131–136, it is laid down that all overseas countries and territories which were or had been dependencles of EEC member countries should be associated with the Community in order to assist economic and social development of such countries and to bulld close economic relations between them and the European Community. The present article discusses the effects which this policy has had up to the present time.     

Structural problems of the next few years

The Federal Republic of Germany will be facing in the next few years changes in its economic structure which, if not in their extent, in their effect on the employment situation will be without parallel in the post-war period. After fifteen years of nearly uninterrupted full employment, it is reasonable to expect in the medium term an over-all rate of unemployment of the order of 2–3 p.c. (0.5–0.7 mn).     

The German Public Budgets in 2003/2004: No Sign of Improvement—Deficits set to Rise Further

Original Papers

The German Public Budgets in 2003/2004: No Sign of Improvement—Deficits set to Rise Further     

Measuring the Incidence of Over- and Undereducation

We deploy the unique opportunity of a dataset of Flemish school leavers to measure the incidence of over- and undereducation on the basis of the six applied measures in the literature. The incidence of overeducation in the first job after leaving school ranges from only 8% to 51%, undereducation ranges from 3% to 21%. While 66% is overeducated on the basis of at least one measure, only 3% is overeducated on the basis of every measure. Mismatch correlations range from 5% to 82%. Also the categories in terms of gender, educational level and region of residence with the highest likelihood of being overeducated depend on the measure. These findings clearly underline the weakness of the literature on this subject. However, measuring overeducation in different ways enables to derive some alternative concepts. Genuine overeducation amounts to about 20%. The incidence of over- and undereducation is both attributed to qualification inflation and deflation, and a credential gap. Finally, about 80% of the incidence of overeducation is classified as being structural.