Suchergebnisse

The internet has transformed the way in which voters access and receive political information, such that it has circumvented the filtering of information previously undertaken by editorial offices. Consequently, consumers have had to learn how to filter relevant information themselves. The introduction phase of the internet coincided with a decreasing voter turnout, possibly due to "information overload" or less-focused political information. However, the subsequent rise of social media may help reverse the negative effect on turnout. But this poses challenges for regulatory policy. Understanding the internet's effects on the consumption of information is also relevant for how voters view labor policies.

Vorwort; Inhaltsverzeichnis; Stephan Heblich: Einleitung; Literaturverzeichnis; Jakob Lenke: Regionalpolitik in ländlichen Regionen: Erklärungsbeiträge verschiedener ökonomischer Forschungsrichtungen für die regionale Entwicklung; I. Einleitung; II. Agglomerations- und Wachstumstheorien; 1. Porters Clusterkonzept: Cluster als Motor für die regionale Entwicklung; 2. Endogene Wachstumstheorie: Die Bedeutung von Wissen für regionales Wachstum; 3. Neue Ökonomische Geographie: Positive Skalenerträge und Transportkosten; 4. Entrepreneurship und regionale Wissensspillovers

Hauptbeschreibung Ländlichen Gebieten wird im Vergleich zu Städten und verstädterten Räumen ein komparativer Nachteil hinsichtlich ihrer wirtschaftlichen Dynamik nachgesagt. So profitieren diese Gebiete allenfalls von den Ausstrahlungswirkungen benachbarter Agglomerationsräume, denen sie als verlängerte Werkbank dienen. Daneben existieren jedoch zahlreiche Beispiele ländlicher Gebiete, sog. Industrial Districts, in denen Netzwerke aus kleinen und mittelständischen Unternehmen in speziellen Nischenmärkten weltweit Marktführer sind. Diese ländlichen Gebiete weisen entgegen der obigen.

This paper studies the role of leaders in the social movement against slavery that culminated in the US Civil War. Our analysis is organized around a natural experiment: leaders of the failed German revolution of 1848–1849 were expelled to the United States and became antislavery campaigners who helped mobilize Union Army volunteers. Towns where Forty-Eighters settled show two-thirds higher Union Army enlistments. Their influence worked through local newspapers and social clubs. Going beyond enlistment decisions, Forty-Eighters reduced their companies' desertion rate during the war. In the long run, Forty-Eighter towns were more likely to form a local chapter of the NAACP. (JEL D74, J15, J45, J61, N31, N41)

This paper discusses the role of so-called national champions within the context of the EU's ambitious goal to become the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economic region in the world by 2010. We find football to be a useful analogy in our discussion of national champions. There are many different types of football players: veteran performers who are past their prime, young stars who have not yet developed their full potential, fans' darlings, and the actual stars—the key performers. For a team to be consistently successful across time, it needs to maintain the right mix of different types of players, particularly in regard to current and future key performers. What makes a key performer a "real" star is not only extraordinary talent but also, and perhaps even more important, ability to be a team player and inspire others to be the same. Applying this analogy to the economic field, we come to the conclusion that the "real" champions in the business environment serve as network pilots within regional networks. By fostering a dynamic economic environment, they create their own rents, unlike less successful firms who concentrate on unproductive rent seeking and shifting.

"Die Bevölkerungsentwicklung in Deutschland findet seit einiger Zeit ein breites öffentliches Interesse. Doch wie kann den damit verbundenen Herausforderungen adäquat begegnet werden? Es bedarf einer Politik, die dazu beiträgt, die schrumpfenden Humanressourcen sowie deren Auf- und Ausbau nicht zu behindern und sie bestmöglich einzusetzen. Eine solche Politik könnte man als Wirtschaftsgrundlagenpolitik bezeichnen. Dafür gilt es auch, bestehende Institutionen hinsichtlich ihrer Eignung zu überprüfen. Einige Institutionen waren durchaus geeignet, gesellschaftliche Probleme zufrieden stellend zu lösen. Im Zuge des demographischen Wandels und der voranschreitenden Globalisierung verloren sie jedoch ihre Wirksamkeit. Der Beitrag behandelt exemplarisch drei Institutionen, die aufgrund veränderter Rahmenbedingungen unerwünschte externe Effekten erzeugen: Die Gewerkschaften im Rahmen der Tarifautonomie, das Umlageverfahren in der Rentenversicherung sowie das duale Ausbildungssystem. Die Rückbesinnung auf die Eigenverantwortlichkeit des Individuums kann dazu beitragen, die im Wandel der Zeit entstandenen externen Effekte zu reduzieren." (Autorenreferat)

This paper evaluates the impact of public employment on private sector activity using the relocation of the German federal government from Berlin to Bonn in the wake of the Second World War as a source of exogenous variation. To guide our empirical analysis, we develop a simple economic geography model in which public sector employment in a city can crowd out private employment through higher wages and house prices, but also generates potential productivity and amenity spillovers. We find that relative to a control group of cities, Bonn experiences a substantial increase in public employment. However, this results in only modest increases in private sector employment with each additional public sector job destroying around 0.2 jobs in industries and creating just over one additional job in other parts of the private sector. We show how this finding can be explained by our model and provide several pieces of evidence for the mechanisms emphasized by the model.