In seinem Vortrag vor dem hessischen Unternehmertag analysierte Hans-Werner Sinn, Präsident des ifo Instituts, die gegenwärtige konjunkturelle Lage. Die Welt teile sich in zwei Gruppen von Ländern: einerseits die Schwellenländer, Deutschland, Schweden, die Schweiz und einige osteuropäische...

The Ifo Institute has worked out a detailed proposal to reform the system of welfare benefits and made estimates regarding the consequences for employment, distribution of income and fiscal costs. The Ifo proposal aims at making the German labour market functional again without lowering the...

Redesigning the Welfare State argues that the current high level of unemployment in Germany not only creates a major challenge for the German welfare state, but is to a good extent caused by the way the country's welfare system is designed. - The authors review the public debate on labour market...

The paper studies the role of international implications after EU enlargement. Based on a formal model with migration costs for both capital and labor, it predicts a two-sided migration from the new to the old EU countries which is later reversed. As the migration pattern chosen by market forces...

The emergence of the Asian tiger countries and the participation of the ex-communist countries in world trade has reduced the equilibrium price of labor in western Europe and elsewhere. However, the actual price of labor hardly reacts, because the welfare state's minimum replacement incomes are...

The paper studies the role of international implications after EU enlargement. Based on a formal model with migration costs for both capital and labor, it predicts a two-sided migration from the new to the old EU countries which is later reversed. As the migration pattern chosen by market forces...