Table of Contents: I. External Challenges 12 1. The Transformation of Central and Eastern Europe 12 a. Trends in Central and Eastern Europe's Emerging Market Economies (EMEs) 12 b. The Impact on Germany 14 c. Political Consequences 14 2. Migration Pressures 16 a. The European Perspective 16 b....

In the post-war economic history of West Germany, there have been two periods of significant unemployment. If we take full employment to mean a jobless rate of less than 3 %, the two periods can be dated as 1948 to 1958 and 1975 to the present. While the latter period has naturally been subject...

This paper is an empirical critique of Barry Eichengreen's interpretation of the exceptional growth performance of Western Europe during the 1950s and 1960s. The main part of the paper shows that, at least for the important case of West Germany, Eichengreen fs view of a broad-based economic and...

In recent years, there has been an intense debate among economists about the causes of unemployment in Europe. Broadly speaking, the views can be grouped into two familiar camps: those with a more (neo-)classical outlook - stressing the importance of factor price movements, institutional...

In German post-war historiography, the 1960s are usually viewed as a time of political and economic transition. Politically, the period marks the watershed between the paternalistic conservatism of the Adenauer era and the full-scale social democracy of the early seventies, with the so-called...

The main point of this paper will be that West German unemployment in the late 1980's has a curious double character: while its genesis is largely determined by the macroeconomic events of the last two decades - two stabilization crises and one wage revolution -, its current state reveals...

By historical standards, the 1980's have been a time of high unemployment in West Germany. Not surprisingly, they have also been a boom period for theories about unemployment and policy proposals against it. This paper is an attempt in stocktaking: We shall try to sort out which of the most...