„Keine Wende“?: Finanzhilfen für ostdeutsche Betriebe und Kontinuitäten der Subventions- und Strukturpolitik in der „Ära Kohl“ nach 1989

Damm Veit ()
Additional contact information
Damm Veit: Abteilung Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte, Universität des Saarlandes, Historisches Institut, Postfach 151150, D-66041Saarbrücken, Germany

Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte / Economic History Yearbook, 2017, vol. 58, issue 2, 513-536

Abstract: This article examines financial aid for companies and the guidelines of subsidy policy in East Germany after 1989 in the context of German structural policy in the “Helmut Kohl era” (1982-1998). It comes to the conclusion that – after a short period of fast structural change in East Germany – efforts increased to rescue existing businesses and industrial sites, as well as the jobs they provided after the end of 1992, primarily through the initiative of regional actors. Financial aid for companies – particularly for funding industrial investments in modernisation and new plants – played a key role in the rescuing and restructuring process. At the same time, structural policy gradually converged with the patterns that had been formed during the political management of structural change in the “former” Federal Republic. Only the short period of the postreunification years 1991 and 1992 was characterised by the steering of structural change and the redefinition of East German industry by the markets as well as by a renunciation of subsidies for the preservation of existing jobs. The temporary retreat of the state from structural policy was partly a result of the experience of the 1980s, when structural policy was criticized for slowing down German economic growth and impeding structural change.

Keywords: Transformation 1989; Strukturpolitik; Subventionspolitik; Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland seit 1982; transformation 1989; structural policy; subsidy policy; history of the Federal Republic of Germany since 1982 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L N P (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1515/jbwg-2017-0019 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bpj:jbwige:v:58:y:2017:i:2:p:513-536:n:3

DOI: 10.1515/jbwg-2017-0019

Access Statistics for this article

Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte / Economic History Yearbook is currently edited by Dieter Ziegler

More articles in Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte / Economic History Yearbook from De Gruyter
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().