WIFO continues, in the present paper, its report on key indicators of climate change and energy use in Austria with data for the year 2009. The indicators thus mirror the impact of the economic crisis 2008-09 on greenhouse gas emissions, and the use and consumption of energy. The...

"Competition", "liberalisation" and "privatisation" are emotive words in Austria's economic policy debate. To contribute to a less emotional discussion on the "privatisation of public assets" WIFO provides an objective and balanced analysis, not only of the advantages and opportunities of...

This second contribution to WIFO's series of articles on privatisation focuses on the analysis of the empirical evidence. It also investigates which extent of government withdrawal from state-owned enterprises would be optimal from the perspective of industrial location policy. According to the...

Any analysis which limits the causes of the financial and economic crisis to either market failure or to the failure of the state can only be viewed as superficial. The causes are rather a combination of both these factors. Had there been a more clearly defined division between the role of the...

An analysis of the Austrian manufacturing sector found persistent structural deficits which continue to hamper Austria's rise to the top ranks of leading industrialised countries: over-specialisation on labour-intensive industries, concurrent with under-specialisation on research-intensive...

The current Austrian antitrust law regime has been in force for six years. Experience so far has clearly brought to the fore the strengths and weaknesses of the institutional setup and procedures in place, from which a need for reform may be derived. The latter arises largely from the fact that...

A detailed examination of the determinants of industry growth is of particular relevance to industrial policy. This article uses a comprehensive panel approach to analyse the growth process of manufacturing industries in the EU countries over the period 1985-1997. Following a review theoretical...

Electricity market liberalisation introduced in Austria four years ago initially brought the expected price reductions for both small and large users of electricity – but not more competition. Due to unresolved homemade structural problems, liberalisation has left incumbent electricity...

Since the mid-1990s, product market competition in Austria has become markedly more vigorous, driven by "externally induced" competition-oriented structural reforms. Under this changed framework the performance of the Austrian economy in the 1990s was quite satisfactory. Recently, however, this...

A company's own assessment of a given location often contradicts the results of external analyses of competitiveness. Whereas the latter are based on scientific methods yielding intersubjectively reproducible results, the former reflects the subjective view of the enterprise. For the purposes of...