Public Debt and Generational Balance in Austria

Based on Austria's fiscal stance in 1995, wecompute the generational accounts for currently living as well as future generations.The results reveal the existence of an intergenerational imbalance in favor of currentlyliving generations. Total public sector liabilities may be more than five times as high asthe officially recorded level of public debt. Without any action, future generations would facelife-time net taxes that are about 65 percent higher than the tax burden of a current newborn.If the government could fully and permanently retain the expenditure cutting andrevenue raising effects of the 1996 fiscal consolidation package and the 1997 pension reform,then it might be able to significantly reduce the intergenerational liabilities. However,enacting both the recent tax reform 2000 and the reform of the family support scheme wouldincrease again the fiscal imbalance and intergenerational bias of fiscal policy in Austria.     

Industry-Level Wage Bargaining: A Partial Rehabilitation—The German Experience

In order to reduce unemployment, it is often recommended that industry-level wage bargaining in Germany should be replaced by a more decentralized system. This paper provides a critical assessment of the current wage bargaining institutions and re-examines the case for a more decentralized system. Based on a theoretical model integrating Insider–Outsider aspects into the comparison, the uniformly superior employment performance of a decentralized wage bargaining system is questioned. We conclude that, rather than solely trying to decentralize wage bargaining, a promising policy option may be to improve the skills of the unemployed by efficient labour market policies and to foster institutional reforms such that wage bargaining takes account of the long-run employment consequences of wage setting.     

如何认识体验经济

一、体验经济的提出 自1998年美国Strategic Horizons LLP公司两位创始人B.Joseph Pine和JamesH.Gilmore在同年<哈佛商业评论>(Harvard Business Review)7/8月号期刊上发表<欢迎进入体验经济>(Welcome to the experience economy)一文以及1999年由哈佛商学院出版社出版两人合著的<体验经济>(The Experience Economy)一书以来,体验经济的提法日益受到人们的关注,尤其是在IT业更是备受青睐.然而值得回味的是,在之前近30年,著名未来学家阿尔文·托夫勒于1970年在其所著的<未来的冲击>一书中,虽早已提到继服务业发展之后,体验业将成为经济的支柱,但一直没有引起人们的注意.究其原因,一方面是因为托夫勒先生虽然提到继服务经济发展之后体验经济将会出现,但没有象前面提到的两位美国企业家那样作深入细致的分析;另一方面更重要的原因在于,世纪之交一系列经济和社会环境的变化,使得体验经济的重提,恰逢其时.那么有哪些变化使得体验经济的概念在世界范围内能够迅速传播呢?大致说来,主要有以下几个方面: