This article questions the strict parallelism of demographic and economic development in characterising urban shrinkage in Germany. As the cases of several Ruhr cities and East German cities prove, urban economic growth can be achieved thanks to the substantial presence of modern industries and business services, and despite declines in population size. Serious shrinkages of Halle, Cottbus and Schwerin are primarily due to failures in the post-industrial transformation process. Recent policy measures strongly oriented towards slowing the downsizing process of population (via e.g. urban regeneration strategies) do not appear to be sufficient for achieving urban resurgence in these cities. More active industrial policy measures are required there to create a competitive high-tech manufacturing sector, to stimulate innovation activities and to boost its growth interdependence with modern local services and R&D infrastructure.
Local innovation networks are considered to be important to innovation and technological change and to growth prospects of regions and cities in Germany. When analysing the local (or regional) innovation system, one should consequently not only investigate horizontal and vertical relations among firms but also the contacts with universities and other research institutions. Furthermore, the role of government agencies and interest groups that provide financial support as well as commercial and technical information should also be taken into account. However, the review of relevant theoretical and empirical investigations related to the German experience shows that such innovation and R&D co-operation networks appear to be less significant than expected. In general various regional technology policy measures adopted in German states (the provision of research infrastructure, establishment of technology centres, innovative SME support programmes, etc.) have been more successful in already economically better-off large cities than in the rural areas. Apart from offering a critical review of relevant theoretical and empirical research, this study introduces the present regional technology and R&D promotion policies in German states and examines the local innovation systems, taking Landshut and Bochum as examples.
The objective of this study is an investigation of tax regulations for nonprofit associations (NPAs) in EU countries, Japan, and the United States. Following a brief description of qualification principles for NPAs, treatment of business units, or liability issues, a particular focus is put on a comparison of regulations concerning the taxation of current profits, inheritance, and gift taxes and the tax treatment of contributions and membership fees. In general, a strong similarity among the examined developed countries can be found for the different aspects considered, but significant differences also exist.
This study compares incentive effects of various tax depreciation methods currently adopted in European transition economies. In these countries straight-line, geometric-degressive and accelerated depreciation measures are quite popular in combination with different corporate tax rates. Their generosity is determined on the basis of Samuelson's true economic depreciation. For this purpose, the present value model is applied under the particular consideration of different financial structures. In this context the traditional Modigliani-Miller theorem for capital structure is revisited. Furthermore, the aspect of inflation is integrated into the model. The central issue is that the historical cost accounting method generally applied for the calculation of the corporate tax base causes fictitious profits in inflationary phases that are also taxed. Therefore, in an inflationary period generous tax depreciation provisions do not promote private investment as designed, but partly compensate such additional tax burdens caused by inflation.
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