Verbraucherpolitische Konzeptionen und Programme in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland

Zusammenfassung Die Notwendigkeit einer expliziten Verbraucherpolitik ist in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland in den letzten Jahren zunehmend anerkannt worden. Dies dokumentiert sich zum einen in einigen Ansätzen zur Institutionalisierung der Verbraucherpolitik, zum anderen in einer programmatischen Diskussion, an der inzwischen die wichtigsten gesellschaftlich relevanten Gruppen teilnehmen. Analysiert und vergleicht man die verbraucherpolitischen Vorhaben amtlicher Stellen sowie die von Arbeitgeberverbänden, Gewerkschaften und politischen Parteien entwickelten Konzeptionen, so zeigt sich ein uniformes Denkschema, das dem Paradigma Markt und Wettbewerb verhaftet ist. Unterschiede offenbaren sich lediglich in den jeweils präferierten Maßnahmen. Alle Konzeptionen folgen — wenn auch mit unterschiedlicher Gewichtung — den beiden handlungsanleitenden Argumentationsschemata »Ergänzung der Wettbewerbspolitik durch Verbraucherschutz und -information« sowie »Gegenmachtbildung und Interessenvertretung«. Der Gedanke an direktere Kommunikationsformen sowie an eine frühzeitige Einflußnahme der Konsumenten auf das Güterangebot findet sich in keinem der Programme.

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Conceptions of consumer policy in the Federal Republic of Germany

The necessity for an explicit public consumer policy has found increased acceptance during the last couple of years. This is reflected both in attempts to institutionalize consumer policy and in a programmatic discussion in which many relevant social groups are participating. The analysis of consumer oriented plans and models of governmental agencies, employers' associations, trade unions, and political parties reveals uniform thought, rooted in the paradigm of market and competition. Differences can be detected only in the recommended measures. Basically all concepts fall under one of the following categories of argumentation: Competition policy needs completion by consumer protection and consumer information or There is a need for consumer countervailing power and consumer lobbyism. The existing plans are characterized by mere auxiliary means to stimulate consumers' reactions. The considerations of a direct communication between producers and consumers and of an early influence by consumers on manufacturers' product decisions are, however, not included in any of the programmes.

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Christine Czerwonka und Günter Schöppe sind Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiter am Institut für Markt und Plan der Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität, 6000 Frankfurt/Main, Senckenberganlage 31.     

Numeracy of Africans,Asians, and Europeans during the early modern period: new evidence from Cape Colony court registers

The lack of accurate measures of human capital formation often constrains investigations into the long‐run determinants of growth and comparative economic development, especially in the developing world. Using the reported ages of criminals in the Court of Justice records in the Cape Archives, this article documents for the first time numeracy levels and trends for inhabitants of the Cape Colony born between the late seventeenth and early nineteenth century: the native Khoesan, European settlers, and imported slaves from other African regions and Asia. This variety of origins allows us to compare contemporaneous levels of early modern development across three continents. By isolating those slaves born at the Cape, we also provide a glimpse into the dynamics of human capital transfer in a colonial setting. The Colony's relatively high level of human capital overall had implications for what was later to be the richest country on African soil, but the very unequal attainment of numeracy also foreshadowed extreme income inequality.     

Industrial Policy in the New Member Countries of the European Union: A Survey of Patterns and Initiatives Since 1990

The transitional recession in the new Central and East European members of the EU called for completely novel approaches to industrial policy in the nineties. A strong rejection of industrial policy could be observed only in some countries and during the first years of the transition process. Subsequently however, deteriorating competitiveness, soaring unemployment and the dramatic condition of key export sectors made the re-appearance of supply-side economic policy thinking inevitable in most Central East European Countries (CEECs), except for such small and open economies as Slovenia and Estonia. A wide variety of industrial policies implemented in the CEECs are compared in the study, with special emphasis on tools used in order to promote incoming foreign direct investment, technological development and the small and medium-sized enterprise sector. These elements of the industrial policy toolkit will keep their key role in most CEECs, albeit their industrial policies will gradually align themselves to the European mainstream.     

Revisiting FDI-led growth hypothesis: the role of sector characteristics

Does foreign direct investment (FDI) lead to higher growth? What type of FDI really works? In this paper, we disaggregate FDIs based on their technological characteristics and investigate which kind of FDI leads to output growth. The results for the sample of OECD countries during the period 1985–2012 indicate that FDI inflows to Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) using and producing manufacturing and service sectors (ICT-based), non-ICT using and producing manufacturing and service sectors (non-ICT-based) and other sectors (non-ICT-other) play no role in contributing to economic growth. However, we provide evidence that absorptive capacities of host countries work through ICT-based FDI inflows. Only if the host countries have sufficient level of human capital, financial resources and technological infrastructure, ICT-based FDI will foster economic growth. The results are robust to controlling missing values, studying the subsample of emerging market economies and consideration of endogeneity.     

Should I invest with my conscience?

This paper discusses the idea that investors have moral reasons to avoid investing in certain business areas based on their own moral views towards these areas. Some have referred to this as 'conscience investing', and it is a central part of the conception of ethical investing within the socially responsible investment (SRI) movement. The paper presents what is taken to be the main arguments for this kind of investing as they are given by those who have defended it, and discusses the plausibility of these arguments from the point of view of moral philosophy. The paper argues that focusing on the moral views of individual investors is not very fruitful – there are strong reasons to think that investors do not have moral reasons to invest 'with their consciences', or, to the extent that such reasons are allowed, that they are very weak compared with other sorts of moral reasons pertaining to ethical investing.     

Network Support and the Success of Newly Founded Business

The "network approach to entrepreneurship" is a prominent theoretical perspective within the literature on entrepreneurship. This literature assumes that network resources, networking activities and network support are heavily used to establish new firms (network founding hypothesis). Further, those entrepreneurs, who can refer to a broad and diverse social network and who receive much support from their network are more successful (network success hypothesis). Based on a study of 1,700 new business ventures in Upper Bavaria (Germany), the article gives an empirical test of the network success hypothesis. It is argued that one reason, why previous studies did not consistently find positive network effects, may be that social capital (network support) is used to compensate shortfalls of other types of capital (human capital and financial capital). This compensation hypothesis, however, does not find empirical confirmation. On the other hand, however, the network success hypothesis proves to be valid in our analyses, i.e. network support increases the probability of survival and growth of newly founded businesses.     

An economic analysis of the EU Commission’s proposal for a new consumer credit directive

The debate on ratification or revision of the proposed new Consumer Credit Directive continues. The European Parliament neither rejected nor approved the Commission’s proposal at the plenary session on November 5, 2003. While the Commission insists on defending the merits of the proposal, the LAC Rapporteur Würmeling calls for a complete modification. This article is intended to serve as a navigation guide past the holes and obstacles on the winding ratification path.     

Exit and Entry Over the Product Life Cycle: Evidence from the Swedish Manufacturing Industry

In this paper the process of exit and entry of firms in the Swedish manufacturing industry is investigated within the framework of the product life cycle. The product life cycle theory explains how the high degree of uncertainty, as regards product designs and production methods, which is connected to the early stages of the product life cycle requires a high level of knowledge-intensity. Since uncertainty decrease over the product life cycle, less knowledge is needed in production during later stages of the product life cycle. This implies that knowledge-intensity differs for firms that exit and enter in different stages of the product life cycle. Four hypotheses regarding these relationships are stated and empirically tested in this paper, using data at the 5-digit SIC-level for the Swedish manufacturing industry during 1990–1996. The empirical results show that entrants in the early stages of the product life cycle are more knowledge-intensive than incumbent firms. It is also found that firms exiting in early stages of the product life cycle are more knowledge-intensive than firms exiting in later stages.     

Future trends in international migration

The author evaluates projections by the World Bank that show a significant decline in international migration over the next decade. "This projection not only assumes a narrowing of the welfare gap between industrialised and developing countries. It also sets out from the premise that potential migrants react to changes in the economic and social conditions in their home countries with more or less constant (negative) migration elasticities. The following article shows that there is reason to question the validity of this assumption."