Dynamic Factor Demand In A Rationing Context

A macroeconomic disequilibrium model is developed for the Federal Republic of Germany. Starting with a microeconomic model of firm's behaviour, the optimal dynamic adjustment of employment and investment is derived. The model of the firm is complemented by an explicite aggregation procedure which allows to derive macroeconomic relations. The model is estimated with macroeconomic data for the Federal Republic of Germany. An important feature is the consistent introduction of dynamic adjustment into a model of the firm. A new method is the particular approach of a delayed adjustment of employment and investment. The estimation results show significant underutilizations of labour and capital and indicate the importance of supply constraints for imports and exports. As the most prominent result, they reveal the importance of the slow adjustment of employment and investment for the macroeconomic situation in Germany and especially for the persistence of high unemployment in the eighties.

The recent development of endogenous growth theories has renewed the in terest into the sources of productivity growth of the advanced industrialized economies. The basic advance of these models is that the evolution of tech nological progress is explained endogeneously within the economic model. The most important concept is the idea of endogenous, market-driven inno vations which are seen as the basic source of technological advances. Firms develop sophisticated production techniques and new products in order to reduce costs or to stimulate demand. Equally important is the concept of knowledge spillovers from innovation activities and scale economies associ ated with them. External effects drive a wedge between private and social re turns of innovation activities, and scale economies affect the market structure. In addition, each year's productivity increases exhibit an enormous social value. Therefore, the analysis of endogenous innovations, scale economies, and knowledge spillovers has important implications for economic policy which enhances the interest into empirical investigations of these issues. This book is a collection of theoretical and empirical work on this subject. It combines micro economic and macroeconomic issues; a special emphasis is placed on empirical applications. Much work has been devoted to the search and the preparation of appropriate data, and all models are estimated with panel data. The first two chapters take an aggregate view at the growth process.

. The organizers of the ninth symposium, which produced the current proceedings volume, were Claude Hillinger at the University of Munich, Giancarlo Gandolfo at the University of Rome "La Sapienza," A. R. Bergstrom at the University of Essex, and P. C. B. Phillips at Yale University.

Part 1 of this volume focusses on globalization. Gains from trade, international competitiveness, labour market issues in open economies, customs unions, dumping and intra-firm trade are the topics of this part. Part 2 puts a stronger emphasis on dynamic economics. Social income, intergenerational transfers, public pension systems, and bequest and gift motives in overlapping generation models are main topics. Economic policies are analyzed in Part 3, including the relation between wage rigidity and migration, several aspects of German financial and monetary policy, as well as tax competition. The volume concludes with institutional issues of globalization, a western view on eastern transition, social cost of rent seeking, and the evolution of social institutions.

This volume discusses some economic aspects of immigration with special refer ence to the case of Germany. Immigration has become a major issue in Germany. Germany still does not have an official immigration policy in spite of the fact that more than 8 percent of the residents are non-citizens and that Germany · s immigration figures almost have reached the US figures. The foreign Iabor supply strongly influences the German Iabor market. The bulk of foreign workers is employed in certain industries. In some industries (mining, steel) 20 and more percent of the employees are foreign workers. Most foreign workers are blue collar workers with low wages. The Iabor demand for immigrants has declined in the last 15 years while the foreign population and Iabor supply has increased. As a consequence, foreigners experience higher unemployment rates than Germans. The fall of the Berlin wall and the collapse of the communist regimes in East Europe further increased the blue collar Iabor supply and strengthened the competition for foreign workers on the German Iabor market.

Oliver Landmann Nobody needs to be convinced of the importance of banking for the Swiss economy. The financial sector grew well above average in the past decade and now accounts for almost 10 % of GDP. Compared to the economy-wide average, it creates more than double as much value added per employee and it is a major contributor to Swiss ex port revenues. But this is no cause for complacency. The industry is subjf:ct to rapid change as the competitive climate has become rougher nationally and internationally. Major structural weaknesses have corne to the surface which raise serious questions about the extent of the required structural adjustments. Thus, banking was an ideal candidate for a major case study in the framework of the National Research Programme No. 28 which is devoted to Switzerland's external economic challenges. The programme was commissioned by the Swiss government and is carried out by the Swiss National Science Foundation. The research project on the fmancial sector was directed by Professors Niklaus Blattner, Hans Genberg and Alexander Swoboda who assembled a team of research economists from the Graduate Institute of International Studies, the International Centre for Monetary and Banking Studies (both at Geneva) and the Labour and Industrial Economics Research Unit at the University of Basel. This joint research effort has yielded an impressive crop of descriptive data, analytical insights and policy-oriented conclusions.

The book is concerned with the main issues that arise for general commodity taxation in the internal market: the choice of a new international tax principle and the question of tax rate harmonization. The book provides a thorough discussion of these issues and evaluates the choices made by the European Community from a welfare-theoretic perspective by comparing them to feasible alternatives. The discussion integrates a large number of recent theoretical and policy-oriented contributions which have so far not been collected and summarized in a single volume. Special features of the book are that (a) the analysis combines elements of international trade theory and public finance, two economic disciplines which are rarely integrated; (b) a dual general equilibrium framework is used throughout the analysis, (c) a second-best setting is consistently employed, incorporating relevant policy constraints and integrating conflicting arguments in a single analytical framework, (d) part of the theoretical analysis is supplemented by a computable general equilibrium approach. The book shows that well-known international trademodels can be extended to model alternative principles for taxing international trade but also international differences in preferences for public goods and different views of government behavior - issues which are directly relevant for the discussion of tax rateharmonization but are rarely treated in an analytical way.

Two areas have fascinated me for a long time. One is the micro economic theory of consumer behavior, the other one the role of space in economic processes. Usually, the two don't go together very well. In more advanced versions of microeconomic consumer theory its economic actor may face uncertainty, have to allocate resources over time, or have to take into ac count the characteristics of products, but rarely deals with space. He/she inhabits a spaceless point economy. Regional Science, on the other hand, describes and analyzes the spatial structure and development of the econ omy, but either ignores individual decision making altogether or treats it in a rather simplistic way. In this book I try to bring together these two areas of interest of mine. I do this by use of the microeconomic concept of search and placing it in an explicit spatial context. The result, in my opinion, is a theoretical concept with fascinating implications, a broad set of potential implications, and numerous interesting research questions. After reading this book, where I layout the basic idea of spatial search, describe its elements, and discuss some of its implications, I hope the reader will share this opinion. There are still plenty of unanswered research questions in this part of economic theory. Hopefully, this book will stimulate more work along these lines.