Nach der Wahl: Was sind die wichtigsten wirtschaftspolitischen Herausforderungen?

Even though Germany’s economy is currently going strong, the country still faces enormous challenges if it wants to maintain and increase this prosperity. The new government should take this opportunity to set the course for the future by encouraging the digitalisation of the economy and the society as well as by ensuring that the ongoing energy transition is sustainable and efficient. Other challenges include the adverse effects of globalisation on parts of society and the uneven distribution of income and wealth. But the actual magnitude of the government’s room to manoeuver is up for debate. The new government’s fiscal space might be more limited than it seems, since an automatic adjustment of the income tax to inflation and growth is required to end the bracket creep. Given that transfer programmes are being phased out, the federal income tax surcharge to finance German unification also needs to be abolished. Further budget pressure stems from the pension system and from demands by state and local as well as European governments. The new German government should use the next governing period to initiate fundamental reforms of economic and fiscal policy that will provide adequate answers to long-run challenges.     

An empirical analysis of green supply chain management in the German automotive industry

The purpose of this paper is the empirical investigation of the status quo of green supply chain management in the German automotive industry from a practitioner's point of view. Several aspects of green supply chain management, such as the point of time of implementation, the driving forces, the relevance of intended goals and their particular realization and the adoption of eco‐programs with suppliers and customers as well as internal and external barriers are analyzed. Furthermore, the link to different performance criteria is tested by inductive statistics in order to show the potential of green supply chain management for competitiveness. For this study, managers from the automotive supply industry in Germany were asked about their estimations in this regard. The main conclusion is that managers express the need for green supply chain management on the one hand but also see corresponding problems in terms of required resources on the other hand. Furthermore, the analyses show that green supply chain management leads to higher performance in terms of several performance criteria. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Enhancing Security Through Efficiency Focus—Insights From a Multiple Stakeholder Pilot Implementation

Efficiency and security are often regarded as opposing factors in transport operations, with increased security causing decreased efficiency. The use of information technology holds the promise of enabling improved efficiency in freight transport operations and this article suggests and elaborates on the proposition that “An increased focus on efficiency will result in improved security for carrier operations.” The research for this article involved a literature review, the collection of empirical data through one in‐depth case study, and elaboration on a proposition through a field pilot implementation. The selected focus was carrier operations in connection with port terminals carrying out RoRo operations on trailers. The article explores and describes how measures to increase efficiency result in increased security.     

Self-employment of immigrants and natives in Sweden – a multilevel analysis

Recent research suggests that self-employment among immigrants is due to a combination of multiple situational, cultural and institutional factors, all acting together. Using multilevel regression and unique data on the entire population of Sweden for the year 2007, this study attempts to quantify the relative importance for the self-employed of embeddedness in ethnic contexts (country of birth) and regional business and public regulatory frameworks (labour market areas). This information indicates whether the layers under consideration are valid constructs of the surroundings that influence individual self-employment. The results show that 10% (women) and 8% (men) of the total variation in individual differences in self-employment can be attributed to the country of birth. When labour market areas are included in the analyses, the share of the total variation increases to 14% for women and 12% for men. The results show that the ethnic context and the economic environment play a minor role in understanding individual differences in self-employment levels. The results can have important implications when planning interventions or other actions focusing on self-employment as public measures to promote self-employment often are based on geographic areas and ethnic contexts.     

Sovereign debt disputes: A database on government coerciveness during debt crises

This paper measures “debt disputes” between governments and foreign private creditors in periods of sovereign debt crises. We construct an index of government coerciveness, consisting of 9 objective sub-indicators. Each of these sub-indicators captures unilateral government actions imposed on foreign banks and bondholders. The results provide the first systematic account of debt crises that goes beyond a binary categorization of default versus non-default. Overall, government behavior and rhetoric show a strong variability, ranging from highly confrontational to very smooth crisis resolution processes. In a preliminary analysis on the determinants of coercive behavior, we find political institutions to be significant, while economic and financial factors play a lesser role. These results open up an agenda for future research.     

A solvency study in non-life insurance

Abstract

This is the first of two papers which report on a solvency study. The study is based on statistical analyses of policy and claims data of a portfolio of single-family houses and dwellings. This paper deals mainly with analyses of fire, windstorm, and glass liabilities. Claim frequencies and claim size distributions are estimated, and the results are used to derive moments of the annual claim amounts and to provide examples of solvency margin requirements for different classes of business. The second paper is devoted to a broader discussion of solvency margin requirements in non-life insurance.     

Contents Volume 22, 2002

Volume Contents

Contents Volume 22, 2002     

Swedish Multinationals and Competition from High- and Low-Wage Locations

This study uses data on Swedish multinationals to estimate cross-elasticities of labor demand in different locations. With a vertical decomposition of the firm's activities, whether there is substitution or complementarity between employment in different parts of the firm will depend on whether wage changes lead to a relocation of activities or simply to changes in marginal costs and/or demand for inputs in other parts of the firms. It is found that there is some evidence of a substitutionary relationship between employment in the Swedish parts of the firms and employment in other high-income locations, but no evidence of substitution stemming from employment in low-income locations.