The long-term development in productivity in an economy is the main indicator in an assessment of the outlook for economic development. In theory, countries that lag behind the leading countries in productivity should gradually succeed in closing that gap. Since the mid-1990s the Federal...

The Russian foreign exchange and financial market crisis of summer 1998 was caused by international movements of capital following the Asian crisis, and it plunged the Russian commercial banks into major difficulties. Practically the entire banking sector was hit by acute liquidity shortage. The...

In an international comparison of the efficiency of the telecommunications (TC) industry for the period 1981 to 2002 Germany is in a middle position; France and Great Britain are better, while the Netherlands and the United States are in a less favourable position. However, supply-side...

In June 2004 only about one tenth of all the seats on the boards of the 200 biggest companies worldwide were held by women. In 22 of these companies women held at least 25% of the seats on the board. Three of the companies were German. Here the percentage is made up entirely of women who...

Worldwide climate protection suffered another serious set-back last year. According to preliminary estimates, energy-induced emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) - the most important greenhouse gas by far - increased by approx. 4.5% on a worldwide basis in 2004 in comparison to the previous year;...

2003 saw a slight decline in the mileage of vehicle kilometers driven annually by all German road passenger and freight vehicles. This development did not continue in 2004; instead the mileage, at 697 billion vehicle kilometers, was higher than ever before, despite the fact that fuel prices...

A comparison based on German and French micro data shows that the redistributive effects of family support provided in the form of tax relief are stronger in Germany than in France. This is true both for redistribution between households of different sizes and for redistribution between...

Intensive discussion is now underway on the tax reform concept put forward by Paul Kirchhof. Analyses based on extrapolations of individual tax return data from the income tax statistics show that ending the main tax concessions and allowances would not be enough to compensate for the loss of...

The price of crude oil goes up and up -most recently driven by hurricane Katrina, which had a catastrophic effect on the US oil industry, and was followed by hurricane Rita. In September 2005 the price of Brent crude reached a new record at US $ 66 per barrel. The agreement by member states of...