Germany has had an extremely low growth performance since 1995. The paper looks at the long-run reasons for this loss of economic dynamics besides German unification: These include leaving labor idle, a declining share of investment in GDP, a weaker innovative activity, an ineffective system for...

Das Handwerk ist ein wichtiger Sektor der deutschen Volkswirtschaft. Die Erscheinungsformen handwerklicher Betriebe haben sich in den vergangenen Jahren aber entscheidend verändert. Während früher die mittleren Größenklassen dominierten, haben heute die Ränder an Bedeutung gewonnen. Dies...

Locational competition is geographic competition, competition between places, between cities, between regions, and between countries. These spatial units compete with each other for the mobile production factors in factor markets, i.e., for mobile capital, for mobile technical know-how, and for...

An Englishman once watched his first American football game. He looked intently as the team gathered into a huddle after each play. His American host asked him what he thought of the proceedings. “Not a bad sport,” remarked the visitor, “but they do seem to engage in an excessive number of...