This paper focuses on the question whether West German firms have experienced an increase in their financial risk position with due implications for the macroeconomy. The investigation is based on a special evaluation of the balance sheet statistics by the Deutsche Bundesbank broken down into...

In a number of articles Neubauer tried to justify and recommend the use of two formulas, one known as Palgrave's index, the other being the harmonic mean of price relatives where weights are expenditures at base period. The properties of the two formulas are examined in detail. The indices have...

This chapter covers the theory and methods for productivity measurement for nations. Labor, multifactor and total factor productivity measures are defined and are related to each other and to gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. Their growth over time and relative counterparts are defined as...

Summary The changes in the financial structures of West German industrial enterprises have been investigated in Größl/Stahlecker/Wohlers (2001). The empirical analysis confirmed the hypothesis that small and medium-sized enterprises are confronted with higher - and even rising - financial...

We test the assumptions of trade-off theory (TOT) and pecking order theory (POT) regarding corporate leverage. The dependent variable being the debt ratio, we apply a linear model upon a balanced panel data-set of 2,370 French SMEs over the period 2002 - 2010. In accordance to TOT, trade credit...

This paper investigates the borrowing behavior of 2,900 French and 1,300 German firms over the 1987-95 period. Both samples based on data sets of the Banque de France and the Deutsche Bundesbank not only include large but also small and medium-sized enterprises. Applying GMM techniques, we...

The success and failure of any democratic government is gauged in terms of how effectively it has fulfilled its constitutional obligation of enhancing social and economic well-being, particularly the common man. While developed economies use a set of indices to measure well-being, a systematic...

Unit labour costs (ULCs) are one of the key economic variables considered in the context of globalization, competitiveness and production-location decisions. With the EU accession of eight Central and East European countries and their (almost) full inclusion in the European Single Market, the...

The aim of this paper is to estimate the changeover's inflationary impact in Italy and Milan and make an assessment of the official methodology used by the National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT). The changeover's inflationary impact has been estimated in 0.6-0.7 percentage points in Italy,...

This paper examines sectoral contributions to discrepancies between China's national aggregate statistical values and the sum of provincial figures. In institutional terms, the paper then explores the sources of principally sectoral discrepancies. We find that the industrial sector has been the...