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On 23 June 2005 the Ifo Institute held its 56th Annual Meeting in the Grosse Aula of the Ludwig Maximilian University. The participants, including numerous representatives of member companies of the Ifo Institute and state and federal ministries, were confronted with an interesting and compact programme. After the welcome by the University Rector, Prof. Bernd Huber, Prof. Sinn presented the new Ifo economic forecast and discussed in particular the development of industrial products in Germany: According to Sinn, Germany is specialising in the final products of industrial production and is outsourcing the work of labour-intensive intermediate products to other countries. As a result the country is continuing its development towards a bazaar economy. This was followed by the keynote lecture, held by the chairman of the German Council of Economic Experts, Prof. Bert Rürup, "What remains to be done after the legislation on sustainability and retirement income?" With respect to pension insurance, Prof Rürup warned against radical reforms and objected to taking into account a stronger weighting of raising of children in the calculation of pensions. The lecture led to a further highpoint and also conclusion of the event, a discussion with a panel of highly-qualified experts, including, in addition to Prof. Rürup and Prof. Sinn, Prof. Hermann Adrian from the University of Mainz, Dr. Ernst-Jürgen Borchert, Heidelberg, and Prof. Axel Börsch-Supan., University of Mannheim. The discussion was led by Nikolaus Piper from the Süddeutsche Zeitung. The Ifo forecast, the keynote address by Prof. Rürup and the statements of the members of the podium are documented in this issue.
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56th annual meeting
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Bert Rürup
Prof. Bert Rürup was the guest speaker for this year's Annual Meeting. In his lecture on the topic "What remains to be done after the legislation on sustainability and retirement income?" Prof Rürup warned against radical reforms for the pension insurance system and objected to a stronger weighting of raising children in the calculation of pensions. In his opinion the constitutionality of reducing the pensions of senior citizens without children is questionable. Moreover, a causal relationship between pensions and the wish for children is highly disputed. Instead Rürup called for an increase in the retirement age and a change in the pension formula.
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G. Flaig, W. Nierhaus, O.-E. Kuntze, A. Gebauer, S. Henzel, O. Hülsewig, A. Kaltschütz, E. Langmantel, W. Meister, M. Ruschinski, B. Schimpfermann and T. Wollmershäuser
The world economy has markedly lost momentum during the current year, after having registered extraordinarily strong growth in 2004. In Germany there is still an almost complete lack of domestic stimulus. Consumer demand and above all the demand for private capital goods, which in view of last year's stormy expansion of the world economy should have increased sharply, remain weak. Investment is even declining slightly. Potential output is currently only increasing by 1%, i.e. by half as much as in the rest of the euro area. Developments in this year and next will follow this trend, by and large. Real gross domestic product is expected to expand by an annual average of 0.8% in 2005, following growth of 1.6% in 2004. Next year, the pace of expansion may accelerate again slightly, in parallel with the improvement of the world economy; real gross domestic product may grow by 1.2%. This implies a slight increase in aggregate capacity utilisation. Despite the oil price surge, the rate of inflation is expected to remain below the 2-percent mark, on average, of the forecasting period. The German labour market has so far failed to turn around. There were 4.81 million registered unemployed this past May, corresponding to an increase of 510,000 over the same month last year. An average of 4.86 million unemployed are expected this year, which already takes into account the 300,000 additional jobs (one-euro jobs) that will be created by the end of this year. The overwhelming part of the increase (about 335,000) may be traced to the inclusion of former recipients of social assistance and is of purely statistical nature. It is offset, however, by various statistical effects of 2003 and 2004 that artificially reduced the unemployment figure by about 245,000. On balance, the unemployment figure is exaggerated by about 90,000 persons due to statistical effects. Even after adjustment for the statistical effects, unemployment has reached the highest level of the post-war period by far. An improvement of the labour market is not expected until next year. Primarily because of one-euro jobs, unemployment may decline to 4.76 million people.
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Between the OECD countries, intensive competition prevails for highly qualified workers from other countries. Here a brief overview is given as to how some countries have facilitated the migration of highly qualified workers in recent years.
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Rigmar Osterkamp
Using the data of the euro countries (excl. Luxembourg) the article examines the questions of the impact that the introduction of the euro and the Stability and Growth Pact have had on these countries and whether the economic stimulus caused by this budgetary system has lessened or heightened growth fluctuations.
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