Austria's GDP grew by just 0.3 percent in 2014, making for a sluggish economy for the third year in a row. Causes for the sluggishness were not just continued investment reticence on the part of businesses and muted expenditure on the part of private households but also the lack of any strong...

Venture capital is a special type of institutionalised private equity. It gains its importance in bridging part of the 'financing gap' not only by the focus on firms with a high growth potential, but also by the intense commitment in terms of the selection and monitoring of projects, which helps...

Private Equity und Venture Capital spielen eine wichtige Rolle im Strukturwandel moderner Volkswirtschaften. Als Elemente eines funktionsfähigen Risikokapitalmarktes bieten sie nicht nur die Möglichkeit für einen gezielten Lückenschluss im Finanzierungssystem, sondern entfalten ihr größtes...

Like with most European railroad administrations, the bulk of orders from the Austrian Federal Railways (ÖBB) are going to domestic producers. This preferential treatment of long tradition will be waived with the signing of the treaty on the European Economic Area (EEA). Over the next two years...

The annual review of the profitability of the Austrian manufacturing sector exhibits two important new features in 1997: First, the new BACH database for the first time allows conducting an EU-wide comparison of profitability based on detailed balance sheet data. Secondly, we have introduced a...

All over the world the telecommunication sector is being liberalized and subject to an increasing international division of labor. The Austrian telecom cluster – i.e., the complete value chain spanning the production of equipment, basic telephone services and advanced value-added services –...

In 2001, Austrian manufacturing experienced a marked slowdown in demand. Due to the weak growth performance on a world-wide scale, exports to the main trading partners lost their dynamism. WIFO estimates that production expanded by only 1.8 percent in 2001. In the WIFO industry surveys, firms...

In a long-term perspective, world trade expands much faster for high-technology manufactures than for goods with low technological content. Compared with other advanced industrialized countries, Austria exhibits a substantial "technological gap" in its foreign trade: 1. The share of...

The earning capacity of Austrian manufacturing industry, as regularly assessed and analyzed by WIFO, has remained stable in 1996. The cash-flow/sales ratio stood at 9½ percent, maintaining the year-earlier level. The beginning cyclical recovery in the second semester, favorable exchange rate...

Consolidation measures will shape budgetary development until 2014. However, despite consolidation efforts reforming education and training policies as well as innovation policies is still possible and necessary. This is because these form the basis for sustainable growth. Increases in public...