Will East Germany Become a New Mezzogiorno?

Boltho, Andrea; Carlin, Wendy; Scaramozzino, Pasquale

doi:10.1006/jcec.1997.1431

Cited by 90 publications

(33 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…As we consider this item to be a rather extreme "black or white" item, additionally requiring respondents to take a rather fuzzy backward looking perspective, we do not consider this item in the following. 8 Detailed results from ordered probit estimates are available on request from the authors.…”

Section: Transition and Risk Attitudementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Five decades after this historic event and two decades after the other even more unexpected historic break, German uni…ciation, the question is not only whether the period of division has e¤ects lasting to the present but also whether it is possible to identify why it has long-term e¤ects. Today, the …rst part of this question is a stylized fact: According to Boltho et al (1997), East German GDP per capita amounted to 120 percent of West German GDP per capita before 1936. It fell back to 60 percent between 1948 and the peaceful revolution of 1989.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A different look at Lenin’s legacy: Social capital and risk taking in the Two Germanies

Heineck

Süßmuth

2013

Journal of Comparative Economics

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Section: Transition and Risk Attitudementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A different look at Lenin’s legacy: Social capital and risk taking in the Two Germanies

Heineck

Süßmuth

2013

Journal of Comparative Economics

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“…After the "Autunno Caldo" of 1969 (Boltho et al, 1997) the nominal wages have become more similar across the country and, added to the standing gap in infrastructures and services (Confindustria, 2000) this has contributed to the lack of inward investment.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…according to Boltho et al (1997), after re-unification, former DDR has experienced a high raise in nominal wages (from 10 to 70% of West Germany) and transfers, but the outcomes should be different from the Italian case since the wage differential remains consistent enough for competitiveness, the investment rate is very high and, very important, East Germany has a tradition of entrepreneurship (it was the most advanced part of the country before WWII) and prosperity that should avoid it to be entangled in dependency and rent-seeking behaviours. Sinn and Westermann (2001), in addition to striking similarities in term of artificially low wage differential, dependency on transfers, locational disadvantages, also find that the level of investment in East-Germany is decreasing, that wages are still higher than productivity and even that "It is impossible to run a market economy where the minimum income guaranteed through the welfare system is equal to the average net-of-tax wage income" (Sinn and Westermann, 2001, p. 23); as a consequence the process of convergence between the two Germanys, substantial until 1996, has halted in 1997.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Regional policy from a supra-regional perspective

Fratesi

2007

Ann Reg Sci

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in AbstractA large number of economic models has been developed in the past 15 years in order to explore the causes of endogenous regional growth and the location of economic activities with the consequent differentials of development among territories. At the same time regional policies have undergone major modifications with increasing importance attributed to bottom up policies and to the efficiency of spending, also due to a situation in which funds are a scarce resource. These developments appear however to have taken place without paying enough attention to the concurrent effects entailed by policies implemented separately by different regions. In fact competing regions can implement policies which are not optimal from an aggregate point of view. At the same time national policies designed to reduce regional inequalities may also be sub-optimal from a country perspective.Unfortunately, it is too often unclear under what values of the parameters regional policies are also able to increase the aggregate economic performance of nations or over-national communities and which policies are, instead, to be simply considered as a means to increase the equality of income across space. Therefore it is on the one hand important to detect which regional policies belong to each of the two categories, then to compare them with different policies (aiming at equality of income or at efficiency) to discover which ones are better suited to achieve the needed results with lower costs. On the other hand, it is important to further investigate which policies are more fruitful if implemented in a context of regional competition and which ones should be top-down. This article addresses the issues presented above. First there is a revision of the existing contributions in order to evidence the general tendencies of the existing literature, the results that can already be considered as achieved and the deficiencies that limit the ability to produce usable policy prescriptions. Then the paper analyses the relationship between regional policies and national competitiveness in a small number of selected existing models of regional growth and localisation, in particular with an extension to the case of competing countries, each composed of more than one region.

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“…At the same time, the emphasis was shifted from building infrastructures to more active intervention aimed at favoring industrialization in the area (1958)(1959)(1960)(1961)(1962)(1963)(1964)(1965). To this aim, the State imposed a large part of the new investments undertaken by large State-controlled manufacturing firms to be located in the South: in 1970 the share in investment and machinery in GDP was 30% higher in the South than in the rest of the country (Del Monte and Giannola, 1978;Boltho et al, 1997).…”

Section: Appendix 1 Balanced Growth With An Imperfect Labor Marketmentioning

confidence: 99%

Decentralization, Social Capital and Regional Convergence

Mauro

Pigliaru

2013

SSRN Journal

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By studying the interaction between social capital and decentralization, we show that political decentralization can be a source of divergence across heterogeneous regions. In particular, we claim that since the local endowments of social capital display their effect on the economy mainly through the functioning of local institutions, decentralization enhances (hampers) growth wherever social capital is high (low). We define our hypothesis within a growth model with public capital, and use the North-South divide in Italy to assess the quantitative plausibility of our model. A calibration exercise shows that it accounts for the major swings in the Italian regional divide since 1861.

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Will East Germany Become a New Mezzogiorno?

Cited by 90 publications

References 21 publications

A different look at Lenin’s legacy: Social capital and risk taking in the Two Germanies

A different look at Lenin’s legacy: Social capital and risk taking in the Two Germanies

Regional policy from a supra-regional perspective

Decentralization, Social Capital and Regional Convergence

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