Technology and economic performance in the German economy

Horst Siebert and Michael Stolpe

No 1035, Kiel Working Papers from Kiel Institute for the World Economy

Abstract: Germany remains Europe's largest and most diversified source of new technology, but still lags in the fastest growing areas of today's high technology. After World War II, West-German technology policy sought to rebuild the institutions which had supported Germany's leadership in the high-tech industries of the early twentieth century - automobiles, machinery, electrical engineering, chemicals and pharmaceuticals. Increasingly, however, those institutions are seen as failing to respond to new technological stimuli. In addition, Germany's bank-centered capital and inflexible labor markets have long constrained the opportunities of innovative firms for equity-based growth and the incentives for academic brains to set up in private business. Promising changes in technology policy and capital market conditions can be observed only since the mid-1990s.

Keywords: economic growth and aggregate productivity; economywide country studies; regulation and industrial policy; technological change (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L5 O3 O4 O5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2001
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:ifwkwp:1035

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