New Growth and Poverty Alleviation Strategies for Africa – Institutional and Local Perspectives. African Development Perspectives Yearbook, Vol. 14
Tobias Knedlik, Karl Wohlmuth, Philippe Burger, Achim Gutowski, Mareike Meyn, T. (eds) Urban, Afeikhena Jerome
,
2009
Abstract
The Volume XIV analyses the “New Growth and Poverty Alleviation Strategies for Africa“. Institutional issues and perspectives in designing new growth and poverty alleviation strategies are considered in various case studies (Cote d'Ivoire, Nigeria, Botswana and Tanzania). Other studies deal with institutional problems of resource-rich countries after conflict (Sudan) and with the institutions to enhance environmental protection parallel to economic growth and poverty reduction (Niger). Further studies deal with institutions to bridge the gap between formal and informal entrepreneurial sectors in Kenya and Tanzania. Local issues and perspectives for designing new growth and poverty alleviation strategies are considered in case studies on rural-urban development gaps in Tanzania and on microfinance as an instrument for new growth and poverty alleviation strategies (Tanzania and Eritrea). A study on small farmers in Ghana provides information on the role they can play in value chains. Two studies on Nigeria highlight the local and the sub-regional health and poverty alleviation programmes and the relation to growth. Book reviews and book notes on the theme are part of the volume. This volume builds the foundation for a comprehensive strategy of policy reforms in Africa so as to integrate new growth and poverty alleviation strategies. Complementary to Volume XIV is Volume XIII on “New Growth and Poverty Alleviation Strategies for Africa - Interational and Regional Perspectives“. Both volumes are of importance for all those who work in African countries as officials, executives, managers, researchers, and policy-makers, but also for all those who actively support Africa's development concerns at the international, regional, country, local, and project levels. They will experience this Volume XIV and also the complementary Volume XIII as indispensable sources of insight, reference, and inspiration.
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Returning to East Germany: Labour Market Success Reduces Re-migration Potential
D. Wiest, Lutz Schneider, Alexander Kubis
Wirtschaft im Wandel,
No. 9,
2009
Abstract
In the public debate, the brain drain from East Germany is supposed to be the most critical trend regarding the development and catching-up of the New Länder. Therefore, potential for in- and re-migration has attracted much attention at least in the political context. Our contribution analyses the re-migration potential on the basis of data from a DFG research project focusing on the re-migration intentions of people formerly emigrated from Saxony-Anhalt. The analysis concentrates on two aspects: firstly on the effect of job market success after emigration; secondly on the impact of social ties in the origin and the host region on the re-migration potential. The econometric results confirm the expected effects: On the one hand, an individual’s job market success in the target region reduces the re-migration potential. Likewise, the re-migration potential increases for people whose former expectations were disappointed. On the other hand, the analysis shows the relevance of social ties to the region of origin for re-migration potential.
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European Commission, Leibniz Association and IWH Discuss Innovation Related Policy in Transitions Regions
Björn Jindra, Katja Wilde
Wirtschaft im Wandel,
No. 7,
2009
Abstract
On February 17, 2009, the Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH) and the Leibniz Association (WGL) held the final conference of the EU-project “Understanding the Relationship between Knowledge and Competitiveness in the Enlarging European Union” (U-know) in Brussels. The research dealt with systemic aspects of innovation and knowledge transfer as well as the development of R&D (research and development) and innovation related policy. Thereby, a particular emphasis was put on the challenges facing the new EU member states and East Germany. The research project proved to be very productive with 54 research papers in refereed journals as well as 33 articles in edited volumes.
The aim of the conference was to present and discuss the main results of the U-know project with experts from the industry as well as the political and scientific community. Within four parallel sessions (Enterprises and markets, Public science and industry links, Systems and governance, Role of institutions), research output was presented. Representatives of the EU Commission commented directly on the presentations with a view on policy implications. In a final panel, all participants underlined the increasing importance of education, R&D, and innovation related policy to support the competitiveness of the EU-15 countries as well as the catching-up process of the new EU member states. The conference has raised significant interest both within the scientific community and the EU Commission.
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Soll die Höhe von Investitionszuschüssen an die Einführung von Umweltmanagementsystemen gekoppelt werden?
Mirko Titze
List Forum für Wirtschafts- und Finanzpolitik,
No. 1,
2009
Abstract
Economic policy has to reconcile a very complex set of objectives. Often, there is a trade-off between these policy targets. This paper focuses on objectives related to the improvement of the regional economic structure and the environmental protection. In Germany, regional policy is pursued among other things using investment grants within the Joint Task framework. At the federal state level, the Länder select and support sustainable investment projects. Some federal states have changed their investment support framework and aim for additional political targets such as environmental protection. Politicians in the Free State of Saxony discuss the option to offer an addition to the basic investment grant. This applies to plants that operate a certified environmental management system. Related to this current political debate this paper describes the effects of such regulatory measures. The article shows that under a particular set of circumstances the envisaged regulation actually could lower the overall level of supported investment and therefore would not stimulate the introduction of environmental management systems. Hence both political objectives would not be fully reconciled. The alternative way could be a direct support of environmental management systems as already introduced in selected other Länder.
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The Role of the Intellectual Property Rights Regime for Foreign Investors in Post-Socialist Economies
Benedikt Schnellbächer, Johannes Stephan
IWH Discussion Papers,
No. 4,
2009
Abstract
We integrate international business theory on foreign direct investment (FDI) with institutional theory on intellectual property rights (IPR) to explain characteristics and behaviour of foreign investment subsidiaries in Central East Europe, a region with an IPR regime-gap vis-à-vis West European countries. We start from the premise that FDI may play a crucial role for technological catch-up development in Central East Europe via technology and knowledge transfer. By use of a unique dataset generated at the IWH in collaboration with a European consortium in the framework of an EU-project, we assess the role played by the IPR regimes in a selection of CEE countries as a factor for corporate governance and control of foreign invested subsidiaries, for their own technological activity, their trade relationships, and networking partners for technological activity. As a specific novelty to the literature, we assess the in influence of the strength of IPR regimes on corporate control of subsidiaries and conclude that IPR-sensitive foreign investments tend to have lower functional autonomy, tend to cooperate more intensively within their transnational network and yet are still technologically more active than less IPR-sensitive subsidiaries. In terms of economic policy, this leads to the conclusion that the FDI will have a larger developmental impact if the IPR regime in the host economy is sufficiently strict.
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Long-Term Growth Projections for Eastern Germany
Udo Ludwig
Wirtschaft im Wandel,
No. 6,
2007
Abstract
Recent research comes to the conclusion that the eastern part of Germany not only heavily de-pends on its western counterpart, but that it essentially is dying a slow death. Arguments for this point of view reach from deindustrialisation and the lack of Headquarters of national and international Corporations to the rapidly aging society.
The study at hand assumes that economic development in a specific region does not only de-pend on the quantity and quality of its factors of production, but also on the overall conditions in the national economy a region is connected to. The analysis uses a framework in which the regional production factors are limited to the population and its development. Just as produc-tion, output is restricted to the value added of the region. Since data is only available for the ten years between 1995 - 2005, a panel econometric approach was chosen. For this purpose, the 97 spatial planning regions of Germany (Raumordnungsregionen) were divided into four groups according to their economic growth; slightly surprising, nine regions from Central Germany and Brandenburg fall into the top two groups.
The estimation results show that both economic growth in Germany as a whole as well as increases in the regional number of inhabitants positively influence regional value added. Fur-thermore, the impact of national growth is largest in the group with the highest regional value added and lowest in the group with the smallest regional output. On the other hand, lagged values of regional growth have the greatest impact in the low growth group and the smallest impact in the high growth group.
The main result of the study is that regional economic growth will not necessarily stop when the population is shrinking. After 2020, though, the growth rates of the gross domestic prod-uct will decrease. At the same time, the growth disparities between the different regions will not decline, a process aided by the demographic developments in Germany.
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Ageing in East Germany: Remarkable reduction of entrepreneurship
Lutz Schneider, Stefan Eichler
Wirtschaft im Wandel,
No. 4,
2007
Abstract
Population shrinking and ageing are obvious trends in many German regions, but in the Eastern states they reach an unique level. An often ignored economic implication of these demographic deve-lopments is the reduction of the entrepreneurial potential. Shirking, on the one hand, diminishes the quantity of potential entrepreneurs, on the other hand these effects are strengthened by ageing trends, since people usually decide in younger years to found an enterprise. The analysis tries to quantify the impact of demographic change on entrepreneurship activities in east Germany until 2020. At the first stage on the basis of the Mikrozensus survey age specific shares of new entrepreneurs are calculated. In order to obtain a status-quo-forecast of new entrepreneurs at the second stage these quotas are combined with the population projections for the East Germany. As expected the propensity to set up a new business is highest for persons at the age form 25 to 39 years. Due to the strong reduction of this age group the number of new firm foundations will fall by approximately 25% until 2020.Whereas the decline in Berlin will be relatively small (14%), Brandenburg has to bear an alarming reduction of 32%.In contrast the West German states show only a reduction of 6% during the same period, which emphasizes the extraordinary dimension of demographic change in East Germany.
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Interregional equalization policy in focus: Donor regions and beneficiary regions and their economic performance
Gerhard Heimpold, Peter Franz
Wirtschaft im Wandel,
No. 11,
2006
Abstract
The future of the interregional equalization policy in Germany is discussed intensively at present. While in the past the interest of equalization policy was focussed primarily on the regions which benefit from interregional equalization policy (beneficiary regions) and the effects obtained there, recently the view is directed also toward the regions which bear the fiscal burden of the equalisation policy (donor regions). Concerning the donor regions, a fear of growth-absorbing withdrawal effects exists, which gives reason in view of declining economic growth rates on the national level to think about the future of interregional equalization policy. The IWH contributed to this debate together with two project partners by an investigation, which was accomplished on behalf of the Federal Office for Building and Regional Planning. The following findings will show the economic performance of the donor regions (exclusively West German regions) and of the beneficiary regions (all East German regions and a few West German regions) and their changing economic growth patterns. Concerning the level of economic performance, measured by means of the gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, as expected, the donor regions, consisting of West German regions, in the period 1992-2003 altogether show an above average GDP per capita. In contrast, the beneficiary regions, both the East German and (less strongly) the West German show a GDP per capita below average. Concerning the development of the economic performance, which was measured on the basis of the relative GDP per capita (GDP per capita of the region concerned in relation to the national average), the East German beneficiary regions could catch up in the first period (1992-1998) strongly. This catching up process, however, clearly slowed down in the second period 1998-2003. Like a mirror-image the lead of the donor regions regarding GDP per capita in relation to the national average became smaller. But after 1998 many West German donor regions regained their growth dynamics. Additionally the contributions of the regions to the absolute increase of the GDP in the period 1998-2003 were investigated: 30 of 271 regions have a share of around 50% in the overall GDP increase, 28 of them located in West Germany, and 21 of them donor regions. This in mind, the policy should further provide and secure favourable development conditions for those regions, which contribute at most to the increase of the overall economic performance and thus create the economic base for the interregional equalization policy.
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Wie steht es in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern um die Ballung wirtschaftlicher Aktivitäten? - Eine Untersuchung unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Städte des Landes
Gerhard Heimpold, Martin T. W. Rosenfeld
Rostocker Beiträge zur Regional- und Strukturforschung, Heft 18,
No. 18,
2006
Abstract
Urban and regional economics put great emphasis on urban spaces and, in general, on the importance of agglomeration forces, which is of great importance for the development perspectives of structurally weak regions. This in mind, the contribution investigates the extent and the structures of economic agglomeration characteristics, using the example of the cities in the Federal State of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. In this context, the question is raised whether the potential given there might be better used to achieve economic progress. The contribution starts with a brief theoretical overview on the importance of agglomeration forces for urban and regional development. The empirical section comprises, first, an analysis how the cities under consideration are endowed with factors being regarded as important for economic growth; second, two essential elements of agglomeration of economic activities are investigated more in-depth: spatially concentrated industries and business networks. The investigation is based on a method which was already in use within an East-Germany wide study on Economic Development Spots (project on behalf of the Federal Office for Building and Regional Planning - BBR, finished in 2004). Finally, the contribution draws implications for the economic policy at the Laender level as well as at the municipal level.
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A Study of the Competitiveness of Regions based on a Cluster Analysis: The Example of East Germany
Franz Kronthaler
IWH Discussion Papers,
No. 179,
2003
Abstract
This paper examines whether some East German regions have already achieved the same economic capability as the regions in West Germany, so that they are on a competitive basis with the West German regions and are able to reach the same economic level in the long run. If this is not the case, it is important to know more about the reasons for the economic weakness of the East German regions twelve years after unification.
The study is based on a cluster analysis. Criteria for the cluster formation are several economic indicators, which provide information about the economic capability of regions. The choice of the indicators is based on a review of results of the theoretical and empirical literature on the new growth theory and new economic geography.
The results show that most of the East German regions have not yet reached the economic capability and competitiveness of their West German counterparts so that they - from the viewpoint of the new growth theory and the new economic geography - are not in the position to reach the same economic level. According to these theories economic disadvantages are most notably the consequences of less technical progress, a lack of entrepreneurship and fewer business concentration. Under these points it is especially noteworthy that young well educated people leave these East German regions so that human capital might will turn into a bottle-neck in the near future. Only a few regions in East Germany - those with important agglomerations - are comparable to West German regions that are characterised by average capability and competitiveness, but not to those with above average economic capability and competitiveness. Even those more advanced East German regions still suffer from a slower technical progress.
There are important policy implications based on these results: regional policy in East Germany was not able to assist raising all regions to a sufficient level of competitiveness. It may be more effective to concentrate the regional policy efforts on a selection of important agglomerations. This has also strong implications for the EU regional policy assuming that the accession countries will have similar problems in catching up to the economic level of the EU as have the East German regions.
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