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Christoph Schröder IW-Trends No. 3 25. September 2013 Labour Costs in Manufacturing

An International Comparison

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Labour Costs in Manufacturing
Christoph Schröder IW-Trends No. 3 25. September 2013

Labour Costs in Manufacturing

IW-Trends

German Economic Institute (IW) German Economic Institute (IW)

An International Comparison

In 2012 the cost of labour in western German manufacturing was 38.88 euros per employee hour. This figure puts western Germany, with labour costs almost a quarter higher than the average of the advanced industrial countries, in fifth position in the 44-country comparison of labour costs drawn up by the Cologne Institute for Economic Research (IW). The cost handicap for Germany as whole is actually 6 percentage points lower since, at 23.57 euros, eastern German manufacturing has labour costs almost 40 per cent below the level in the west. In the last two years cost discipline has been noticeably weaker in Germany than abroad. Initial data for 2013 show this development continuing. Since the turn of the new millennium, cost growth in Germany has remained significantly below the level of the 1990s. In this longer term perspective, German manufacturing has also performed well internationally. In the European Union only Portugal managed to beat Germany’s average annual increase of just over 2 per cent between 2000 and 2012.

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Labour Costs in Manufacturing
Christoph Schröder IW-Trends No. 3 25. September 2013

Christoph Schröder: Industrielle Arbeitskosten im internationalen Vergleich

IW-Trends

German Economic Institute (IW) German Economic Institute (IW)

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Christian Rusche / Jeanne Mouton in European Journal of Law and Economics External Publication 15. November 2023

The anti‑steering provision of Article 5 (4) of the DMA: a law and economics assessment on the business model of gatekeepers and business users

Data is a success factor for digital platforms and the core of their business model. The rationale behind this is that data allows for improving the matching process between users which creates value for the platform.

IW

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Michael Hüther / Hubertus Bardt / Cornelius Bähr / Jürgen Matthes / Klaus-Heiner Röhl / Christian Rusche / Thilo Schaefer IW-Policy Paper No. 7 17. September 2023

Industrial policy at the turn of the times

The current debate on industrial policy vacillates between the extreme positions of an orthodoxy of rejecting state action and a naive belief in the state's ability to control structural change.

IW

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