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Klaus-Heiner Röhl IW-Trends No. 3 25. September 2014 25 Years after the Fall of the Berlin Wall

A Balance and the Remaining Challenges

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25 Years after the Fall of the Berlin Wall
Klaus-Heiner Röhl IW-Trends No. 3 25. September 2014

25 Years after the Fall of the Berlin Wall

IW-Trends

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

A Balance and the Remaining Challenges

The rebuilding of eastern Germany seems to have been largely completed. The IW Unity In-dex, comprising seven indicators of the east-west catching-up process, documents continuous if slow progress. The infrastructure of the six new eastern states is now well developed and their unemployment rate is down to single digits and still falling. The state of the economic structure in the east is now closer to that of its western counterpart, with manufacturing contributing over 17 per cent to gross value added. However, although investment subsidies have boosted economic performance, the productivity of the capital invested and of la-bour lag persistently behind western German levels. Per capita economic output remains less than 70 per cent of the figure for western German and the convergence process has almost stalled. There is a lack of large companies, corporate headquarters and economically vibrant conurbations.

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25 Years after the Fall of the Berlin Wall
Klaus-Heiner Röhl IW-Trends No. 3 25. September 2014

Klaus-Heiner Röhl: 25 Jahre nach dem Mauerfall – Bilanz und Herausforderungen

IW-Trends

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

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Effects of Public Investment on Companies in Germany – Results of the IW Business Survey
Hubertus Bardt / Michael Grömling IW-Trends No. 2 16. June 2023

Effects of Public Investment on Companies in Germany – Results of the IW Business Survey

Weak public investment activity in Germany has contributed to the low productivity growth of the last decades. Even maintaining the contribution to growth of state-owned capital stock at the already low level of the 1990s would have required an additional ...

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Jürgen Matthes / Samina Sultan IW-Kurzbericht No. 29 25. April 2023

Reform of EU-fiscal rules: Lindner's ideas have merit

The German government's proposal to introduce a fixed limit on government spending growth for highly indebted member states in the course of the reform of the Stability and Growth Pact makes sense. Given the macroeconomic environment, such a minimum ...

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