Economics
Refine
Year of publication
Document type
- Bachelor Thesis (58)
- Master's Thesis (11)
Is part of the Bibliography
- No (69)
Keywords
- China (3)
- Blockchain technology (2)
- Demografischer Wandel (2)
- Germany (2)
- Nachhaltigkeit (2)
- Oil price (2)
- Quantitative Easing (2)
- Spain (2)
- Sustainability (2)
- Wettbewerb (2)
In the wake of the financial crisis of 2007, the largest economies of our times struggled hard with adverse economic shocks. Several central banks (CBs) employed their conventional monetary policy tools to their limits and beyond. When failing in their attempt, unconventional monetary policies got gradually introduced in order to stimulate the overall economy, to alleviate market dysfunctions and to reduce liquidity shortages. Building on diverse research conducted by international researchers and data provided by international economic institutions, this paper gives a comprehensive overview of different types of unconventional monetary policy tools that were, and still are, broadly employed. The concept of Quantitative Easing (QE) with its opportunities and risks will be elaborated, as well as appropriate exit strategies from these unconventional monetary policy measures. Putting a special focus on the QE programs run by the Bank of Japan, the Bank of England and the European Central Bank, the successes and failures of real-world examples of unconventional monetary policies will be analyzed in detail. In order to evaluate the usefulness of QE, a comparison of theoretical and real-world results will be conducted. The paper finds that even though QE had a broad range of positive effects on selected economic aspects, the risks of both over-indebtedness and a too strong dependence of economies on highly accommodative monetary policies prevail. Before considering an exit from QE – if still possible at all – many years of further monetary easing and economic stimulus will pass. The raison d’être of unconventional monetary policies, mainly QE, over an extent period of time is doubtful and will have to be closely monitored in the years to come.
Economics of war
(2016)
The twentieth century was a period of great agitation in terms of historical and political events. Two World Wars erupted between 1914 and 1945 in a world already changing. They were separated by both growth and depression. This deeply impacted economics worldwide. In order to understand how the events reshaped the economical world and what it modified, the available literature was reviewed and summarized to focus on the main changes. This helps us to better comprehend the situation for the people at the time, and the economic order as we know it today. The wars had different consequences on countries, as France hosted the fights, it was fully destroyed and its economy was a ruin, while the United States did not fight the war on its soil, the wars boosted its economy, and it exited as a major economic power. This paper showed that war economy is incredibly expensive and hard to finance, being a considerable burden on any economy. Trade appears as a superior choice for countries, because as exchanges increase, the life of population improves, alike the economic health of a country.
According to the United Nations, more than 70% of the world trade is carried out by the multinational companies which represent nearly 250% increase in the last four decades. This also represents the extended number of inter-company transactions such as transfer of money as well as transfer of goods and services from parent company to daughter company and vice versa. This issue of transfer of goods and more specifically transfer of money – as in transfer of profits – gave rise to debates in ‘Transfer Pricing’ in the international context. The companies use number of complex business models such as the Principal Company model as their supply chain network and move profits between different entities and create the tax advantages on basis of corporate tax rates in the different tax jurisdictions by allocating all the sales and profits to the principal company. The entities in high-tax jurisdictions, however, perform business activities on contractual basis and remunerated on cost plus mark-up by the principal company. This results several tax saving benefits for the group as a whole.
Under this behavior of the MNCs, the finance ministers of G20 and the authorities in OECD developed a 15 Action Plan under Base Erosion and Profit Sharing (hereafter “BEPS”) Agenda to develop ways to avoid tax evasions by the multinational corporations in the high-tax jurisdictions. The Action 7 of BEPS Agenda – artificial avoidance of Permanent Establishment status – was introduced for the change of wordings in the Article 5 of the OECD Model Tax Convention which explains the definition of a Permanent Establishment. By doing so, the contractual entities in high-tax jurisdictions, performing business activities on behalf of their cross-border parent in a low-tax jurisdiction, will be given a status of a PE and the sales and profits generated by these entities will be allocated to them and subjected to be taxed accordingly in a high-tax jurisdiction.
The analysis of the profit distribution and taxation of the contractual entities of the cross-border principal company in Germany is conducted by the author in this piece of research and shows the effect on the taxation of a company if the Action 7 of BEPS Agenda carries forward as a local legislation in the OECD countries.
Die vorliegende Arbeit beschäftigt sich mit der wirtschaftlichen Entwicklung der Eurozone vor und nach der Finanzmarktkrise sowie die institutionellen Konstruktionen die mit der Eurozone einhergehen. Die Arbeit ist in zwei Zeitfenster aufgeteilt: einmal von 2002 bis 2007 vor der Finanzmarktkrise und von 2008 bis 2014 nach der Krise. Es wird der Frage nachgegangen, inwiefern die Umsetzung der Währungsunion und das Auftreten der Finanzmarktkrise die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung der Mitgliedstaaten in der Eurozone beeinflusst hat. Dafür werden die Mitgliedstaaten in Süd- und Nordstaaten unterteilt. Die Fragestellungen werden auf der Grundlage verschiedener Datenbanken von der Europäischen Union wissenschaftlich analysiert. Wissenschaftliche Texte stellen eine ergänzende Informationsquelle dar. Im Ergebnis wird deutlich, dass sich die Eurozone, allen voran die Südstaaten, noch nicht von der letzten Finanzmarktkrise erholt hat. Nicht nur die Wirtschaftskrise macht der Eurozone zu schaffen. Vielmehr sind es institutionelle Fehlkonstruktionen in den Verträgen, die das Projekt Eurozone und Europa gefährden. Durch Nichteinhaltung selbst aufgesetzter Regelungen sowie ständige Änderungen sämtliche Verträge, hat das Projekt, ein gemeinsames Europa durch einen gemeinsamen Währungsraum
zu schaffen, an Glaubhaftigkeit verloren.
Nowadays, big sport events such as Olympic Games are not only an exciting carnival for sports enthusiasts, but also a good opportunity for the host country/city to accelerate its economic development. After more than 40 years of development, Computable General Equilibrium has been proved to be a very powerful tool to analyze the impact of big sports events on host country/city. In this paper, 2008 Beijing Olympic Games will be used as the target case to study the impact on the economy. A Supply model and a demand model will be established according to CGE theory to describe the case. This paper is not focused on the detail but the whole picture of Beijing’s economy by analyzing the industrial structure changes under the influences of hosting the Olympic. Beijing’s industrial structure development will also be analyzed in this paper.
Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) among internet companies increased rapidly during the last decade which was caused by the growing competition and changing consumer preferences. Many startup companies enter the market offering hit products and getting millions of users in a short period of time. Due to such quick success established internet players like Google, Twitter and Facebook tend to acquire these startups instead of developing their own R&D. Internet acquisitions are very risky and imply high premiums, therefore, their impact on the innovation performance is quite unclear in the short- and long-term perspective. There is a variety of factors that can affect the innovation performance of both acquiring and acquired companies after the M&A transaction. This thesis is aimed to analyse the impact of M&A on the innovation performance of internet companies taking into account recent acquisitions among social networking players. A case study about Facebook's acquisition of Instagram occurred in 2012 presents the main application for the thesis. Qualitative data for the research is taken from the articles that contain opinions of the industry experts which are then critically assessed using the main scientific concepts about M&A and innovation performance.
Die in letzter Zeit immer häufiger aufkommende Kritik am Wachstumsparadigma lässt
die Frage nach dem Verhalten von Unternehmen weitestgehend offen. Erste Lösungsansätze und ein Großteil der Diskussionen finden hauptsächlich auf
makroökonomischer Ebene statt. Wie aber können sich Unternehmen verhalten, wenn volkswirtschaftliches und unternehmerisches Wachstum begrenzt wird? Welche Form
von betriebswirtschaftlichem Wachstum würde sich unter den geänderten Rahmenbedingungen anbieten? Die Antwort auf diese Frage bleibt in den meisten Fällen, sowohl in Literatur als auch Politik gänzlich unbeantwortet.
Die folgende Ausarbeitung „Kritische Betrachtung wachstumsneutrale Unternehmen und Analyse alternativer Wachstumsformen am Beispiel kleiner und mittelständischer
Unternehmen“ soll eine erste Hilfestellung zur Beantwortung dieser Fragen bieten.
Hierfür wurden – aus verschiedenen Branchen kommend - fünf kleine und mittelständische Unternehmen in Deutschland ausgesucht. Diese wurden zum Teil aus
bereits vorhandenen Studien adaptiert und teilweise in Eigenrecherche als „wachstumsneutral“ definiert. Um die Frage nach wachstumsneutralen Wirtschaften besser beantworten zu können, wurden die einzelnen Unternehmensstrategien auf die jeweiligen, Faktoren der Wachstumsneutralität hin genauer analysiert und zusätzlich
versucht, die Motivation der Unternehmensleitung auszumachen. Diese fünf Unternehmen lassen bereits jetzt die möglichen alternativen Entwicklungswege für ein
ökologisch und ökonomisch sinnvolles Wachstum erkennen. Ergänzend dazu wurden neben den gängigen Wachstumsindikatoren der Betriebswirtschaftslehre noch
weitere, so genannte „qualitative Kennziffern“ beschrieben.
Zusätzlich zum betriebswirtschaftlichen Hauptteil soll mit Hilfe eines kurzen Exkurses in die Volkswirtschaft zum Bruttoinlandsprodukt und Wohlstand erweiternde
Kennziffern vorgestellt werden, welche die Entwicklung von Unternehmen positiv beeinflussen könnten. Hierfür wurde auf die bereits erwähnten, für die volkswirtschaftliche Diskussion vorhandenen Wirtschaftsmodelle zurückgegriffen und diese ausführlicher vorgestellt.
Longevity in the globalised marketplace depends on the ability to remain competitive. Various definitions of economic competitiveness exist: this report compiles them, discusses the methodologies used to measure economic competitiveness and compares the results obtained when these various systems are applied to the country of France. Thereafter, examinations of aspects such as the development of gross domestic product, trade performance, price competitiveness, productivity and employment will be conducted with the aim of providing answers to the following questions: does France really experience a competitiveness problem? If so, what are potential causes of this competitiveness? Is there a particular domain in which France experiences greater difficulties than in others? Comparisons are constantly drawn to countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, Germany and China, where possible. First of all, France's GDP development is described in combination with a discussion of whether or not GDP (per capita) serves as a measure of the performance level of an economy. Then, the country's trade performance is closely examined. Aspects such as France's export market shares and its trade products and partners are investigated. Thereafter, focus is placed on price competitiveness. Analysis of the real effective exchange rate based on consumer price indices, the inflation rate and the nominal effective exchange rate is conducted before the aspects of labour costs and productivity are treated. A breakdown of France's GDP and GDP per capita growth rates, as well as unit labour costs are explored in detail. As the last component of the examination, focus is placed on the subject of employment. The findings of this report suggest that France suffers from a competitiveness problem which presents itself mainly in the field of employment which has a knock-on effect on the labour market. The findings of this report mainly confirm the findings of the literature. Proposed measures in order to resolve France's competitiveness problem target the minimum wage, the elderly workforce, labour market regulations and labour taxes. It is argued that implementation of the suggested measures could eventually improve France's level of productivity and the other issues examined.
The title for this thesis “An Economic Analysis of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP)” has been selected due to its topicality and its explosiveness. The stimulus to write this paper originates in the wish to get a deeper insight into the topic, which has been treated majorly under exclusion of the public, and to be able to make a clear statement whether to support or to oppose the partnership. In order to answer this final question, it is also tested whether results from former agreements like NAFTA or Mercosur can serve as a guideline to what can be expected of TTIP. Additionally, the paper aims at making a final statement about the implications of the partnership for the future. To do this, the present paper covers two main subjects. First, it provides an overview of the history of free trade, the different forms of agreements, as well as an insight into the experiences made with NAFTA and Mercosur. This first part is concluded with an estimation of the results and motivations of and for free trade agreements, as well as a transition to the second main subject by naming the impacts of the findings for the planned TTIP treaty. Secondly, after providing a broad overview of TTIP by giving an insight into the definition and the process of formation of the partnership, the benefits and concerns of the deal are revealed. This part is followed by a broad study of ten indicators, which outline the real effects of TTIP on the economy, by distinguishing between three different scenarios. The thesis is concluded by presenting the findings from the former analysis. Although NAFTA and Mercosur do not provide applicable experiences, they still serve as points of orientation and suggest that free trade should be supported. Thus, the planned partnership should also be agreed upon in order to go with the pace of time and to stay competitive. If this is the case, TTIP will be a leading example in the future, motivating more nations to either join the partnership or to form ones by themselves.