IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/ifwkwp/878.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Transfers and transition: The impact of government support on factor demand and production in Eastern Germany

Author

Listed:
  • Gerling, Katja

Abstract

The paper presents an error-correction model of factor demand and output, analysing the effects of a change in relative factor prices on investment, employment and output in the eastern German manufacturing sector. The principal aim is twofold: first, to examine if the large amounts of capital subsidization mainly benefitted the capital-intensive industries, thus leading to distortions in the production structure, and second, to find out if the subsidies proved to be successful in creating employment in the eastern German industries or if they rather contributed to a substitution of capital for labour and skilled labour. The model uses the concept of the user cost of capital for a representation of capital costs, integrating the main instruments of subsidization. The results confirm that all in all, capital subsidies seem to encourage capital-intensive production structures. As to employment, the positive output effect might overcompensate the substitution effect only for skilled, but not for unskilled labour and only in the capital- and surprisingly also in the labour-intensive industries. For the skilledlabour- intensive industries, the outcome is much less encouraging.

Suggested Citation

  • Gerling, Katja, 1998. "Transfers and transition: The impact of government support on factor demand and production in Eastern Germany," Kiel Working Papers 878, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:ifwkwp:878
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/46689/1/258316632.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Nadiri, M Ishaq & Rosen, Sherwin, 1969. "Interrelated Factor Demand Functions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 59(4), pages 457-471, Part I Se.
    2. Hughes Hallett, A. & Ma, Y. & Melitz, J., 1996. "Unification and the policy predicament in Germany," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 13(4), pages 519-544, October.
    3. King, M. A., 1972. "Taxation and investment incentives in a vintage investment model," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 1(1), pages 121-147, April.
    4. Kerstin Gerling, 2008. "The Real Consequences of Financial Market Integration when Countries Are Heterogeneous," Working Papers 141, Oesterreichische Nationalbank (Austrian Central Bank).
    5. Jorgenson, Dale W, 1971. "Econometric Studies of Investment Behavior: A Survey," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 9(4), pages 1111-1147, December.
    6. M. Ishaq Nadiri, 1972. "An Alternative Model of Business Investment Spending," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 3(3), pages 547-584.
    7. Gerling, Katja & Schmidt, Klaus-Dieter, 1997. "On the competitive position of Eastern German manufacturing: Why is catching-up so slow?," Kiel Working Papers 825, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    8. Kremers, Jeroen J M & Ericsson, Neil R & Dolado, Juan J, 1992. "The Power of Cointegration Tests," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 54(3), pages 325-348, August.
    9. David Begg & Richard Portes, 1993. "Eastern Germany since unification: wage subsidies remain a better way," The Economics of Transition, The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, vol. 1(4), pages 383-400, December.
    10. Brauer, Holger & Falk, Martin & Raiser, Martin, 1996. "Labour markets in Poland and Hungary five years from the start of transition: Evidence from monthly data," Kiel Working Papers 742, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    11. George A. Akerlof & Andrew K. Rose & Janet L. Yellen & Helga Hessenius, 1991. "East Germany in from the Cold: The Economic Aftermath of Currency Union," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 22(1), pages 1-106.
    12. Naujoks, Petra, 1993. "Strukturwandel unter dem Aspekt der Handelbarkeit von Gütern: Der Fall der ostdeutschen Industrie," Kiel Working Papers 584, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Henning Klodt, 2000. "Industrial Policy and the East German Productivity Puzzle," German Economic Review, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 1(3), pages 315-333, August.
    2. Frank Bickenbach & Eckhardt Bode, 2013. "New Economic Geography and Reunified Germany at Twenty: A Fruitful Match?," Spatial Economic Analysis, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 8(2), pages 120-153, June.
    3. Boss, Alfred & Gerling, Katja & Gottschalk, Jan & Kamps, Christophe & Meier, Carsten-Patrick & Scheide, Joachim & Schmidt, Rainer & Strauß, Hubert, 1999. "Deutsche Konjunktur zieht wieder an," Open Access Publications from Kiel Institute for the World Economy 2318, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    4. Klodt, Henning, 1999. "Industrial policy and the East German productivity puzzle," Kiel Working Papers 943, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    5. Gerling, Katja, 2000. "Subsidization and Structural Change in Eastern German Transition: Did Economic Policy Meet Its Objectives?," Kiel Working Papers 998, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Schmidt, Klaus-Dieter, 1997. "Corporate restructuring and export performance in the transition process: The case of Eastern Germany," Kiel Working Papers 845, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    2. Schmidt, Klaus-Dieter, 1996. "German unification: A progress report," Kiel Working Papers 722, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    3. Page, William, 2003. "Germany's Mezzogiorno revisited: Institutions, fiscal transfers and regional convergence," Research Notes 9, Deutsche Bank Research.
    4. Harrigan, Frank & McGregor, Peter G & Swales, J K, 1996. "The System-Wide Impact on the Recipient Region of a Regional Labour Subsidy," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 48(1), pages 105-133, January.
    5. Henning Klodt, 2000. "Industrial Policy and the East German Productivity Puzzle," German Economic Review, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 1(3), pages 315-333, August.
    6. Klodt, Henning, 1999. "Industrial policy and the East German productivity puzzle," Kiel Working Papers 943, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    7. Gerling, Katja, 2000. "Subsidization and Structural Change in Eastern German Transition: Did Economic Policy Meet Its Objectives?," Kiel Working Papers 998, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    8. Agnès Bénassy-Quéré & Pierre Villa, 1994. "La réunification allemande du point de vue de la politique économique," Working Papers 1994-09, CEPII research center.
    9. Clemens Fuest & Bernd Huber, 1998. "Why Do Countries Subsidize Investment and Not Employment?," NBER Working Papers 6685, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Hughes Hallett, A. & Ma, Y. & Melitz, J., 1996. "Unification and the policy predicament in Germany," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 13(4), pages 519-544, October.
    11. Barbara Dluhosch & Daniel Horgos, 2008. "Wage vs. industry subsidies: coping with technology related unemployment in a globalized economy," International Economics and Economic Policy, Springer, vol. 5(4), pages 371-388, December.
    12. Alexander Eickelpasch & Tatjana Ribakova, 1997. "Restructuring and Competition Strategies of Privatised Enterprises in East Germany: What Lessons for Russia?," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 157, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    13. Ray Barrell & Dirk Willem Te Velde, 2000. "Catching‐up of East German Labour Productivity in the 1990s," German Economic Review, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 1(3), pages 271-297, August.
    14. Christian Thimann & Michael Breitner, 1995. "Eastern Germany and the conflict between wage adjustment, investment, and employment: A numerical analysis," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 131(3), pages 446-469, September.
    15. Karp, Larry & Paul, Thierry, 1994. "Labor Adjustment and Gradual Reform: Is Commitment Important," CUDARE Working Papers 201474, University of California, Berkeley, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics.
    16. Venetoklis, Takis & Kangasharju, Aki, 2002. "Business Subsidies and Employment of Firms: Overall Evaluation and Regional Extension," Discussion Papers 268, VATT Institute for Economic Research.
    17. Keller, Wolfgang, 2000. "From socialist showcase to Mezzogiorno? Lessons on the role of technical change from East Germany's post-World War II growth performance," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(2), pages 485-514, December.
    18. Palle S. Andersen, 1987. "Profit shares, investment and output capacity," BIS Working Papers 12, Bank for International Settlements.
    19. Karp, Larry & Paul, Thierry, 1998. "Labor adjustment and gradual reform: when is commitment important?," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(2), pages 333-362, December.
    20. Gupta, Asha, 1998. "Privatization in East Germany: Can the Treuhandanstalt provide a model?," Kiel Working Papers 849, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E22 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Investment; Capital; Intangible Capital; Capacity
    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
    • H20 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - General
    • C33 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Multiple or Simultaneous Equation Models; Multiple Variables - - - Models with Panel Data; Spatio-temporal Models

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:ifwkwp:878. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iwkiede.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.