Hans-Werner Sinn

Mutige Reformen wagen: wirtschaftlich, politisch, europaweit. Noch geht es uns vergleichsweise gut. Und doch sind die Zeiten ernst. Was müssen wir tun, um auch in Zukunft in Wohlstand leben zu können? Hans-Werner Sinn, Deutschlands einflussreichster Ökonom, versteht es wie kein anderer, dieser zentralen Frage mit Blick auf die wirklich wichtigen Aspekte nachzuspüren. Besonderes Unbehagen bereitet ihm die mangelnde Fähigkeit und Bereitschaft der meisten politischen Mandatsträger und Meinungsführer, sich mit ökonomischen Grundfragen zu beschäftigen, sich den wirtschaftlichen Realitäten zu stellen und diese in die richtige Politik umzusetzen. Sinn erklärt diese Realitäten kompakt und konkret. Und er fordert eindringlich ein weniger kurzfristiges, ein nicht nur an Wiederwahl und Machterhalt interessiertes Politiker-Verhalten und mehr politischen Mut - nicht nur bei der Bewältigung der Euro-Krise, sondern auch in anderen Handlungsfeldern zur Sicherung des Standorts Deutschland und seiner demokratischen Institutionen, seiner Unternehmen, Arbeitnehmer und Bürger. Sinn macht konkrete Vorschläge für Reformen rund um gute Wirtschaftspolitik, nach-haltige Staatsfinanzen, Wahlrecht und Finanzierbarkeit von Parteiprogrammen, um die mangelnde Langfristorientierung politischen Handelns endlich zu überwinden. Erstmals gibt er zudem Einblicke in seine Wertvorstellungen und die Entwicklung seines Denkens - als Wissenschaftler, wirtschaftspolitischer Mahner und Mensch. Hans-Werner Sinns neues Buch ist auch der Appell eines leidenschaftlichen Forschers und Europäers, die ökonomischen Fakten zur Kenntnis zu nehmen und die Politik zu ändern.

Verspielt nicht eure Zukunft!

Philippe Martin

Richard Portes

Georges De Menil

Giuseppe Bertola

Jan Van Ours

Top economists provide a concise and accessible evaluation of major developments in trade and trade policy. Economic Policy has earned a reputation around the world as the one publication that always identifies current and emerging policy topics early Papers are specially commissioned from first-class economists and experts in the policy field The editors are all based at top European economic institutions and each paper is discussed by a panel of distinguished economists This unique approach guarantees incisive debate and alternative interpretations of the evidence

Economic Policy 55

Edmund S. Phelps

These chapters, written from widely varying perspectives demonstrates the shortcomings and strengths of some methods of econmoics as much as they do the shortcomings and strengths of some economies of Western continental Europe.

Perspectives on the Performance of the Continental Economies

Gilbert Cette

Michel Fouquin

Papers from a seminar held at the Royaumont Abbey on 22 and 23 March 2004, and organized by the Banque de France, CEPII, and the Ifo Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich.

Measuring and Explaining Productivity Gaps Between Developed Countries

Divergences in Productivity Between Europe and the United States

Top economists provide a concise and accessible evaluation of major developments in trade and trade policy. Examination of key issues pertinent to the multinational trading system, as well as regional trade arrangements and policy developments at the national level. Provides up-to-date assessments of the World Trade Organization's current Trade Policy Reviews. Economic Policy is written for all those with an informed interest in economic policy problems. All articles are submitted to rigorous scrutiny by a panel of distinguished economists from around the world, resulting in a volume of authoritative and accessible articles, each followed by the comments of panel members.

Economic Policy 53

A leading economist develops a supply-side approach to fighting climate change that encourages resource owners to leave more of their fossil carbon underground. The Earth is getting warmer. Yet, as Hans-Werner Sinn points out in this provocative book, the dominant policy approach—which aims to curb consumption of fossil energy—has been ineffective. Despite policy makers' efforts to promote alternative energy, impose emission controls on cars, and enforce tough energy-efficiency standards for buildings, the relentlessly rising curve of CO2 output does not show the slightest downward turn. Some proposed solutions are downright harmful: cultivating crops to make biofuels not only contributes to global warming but also uses resources that should be devoted to feeding the world's hungry. In The Green Paradox, Sinn proposes a new, more pragmatic approach based not on regulating the demand for fossil fuels but on controlling the supply. The owners of carbon resources, Sinn explains, are pre-empting future regulation by accelerating the production of fossil energy while they can. This is the “Green Paradox”: expected future reduction in carbon consumption has the effect of accelerating climate change. Sinn suggests a supply-side solution: inducing the owners of carbon resources to leave more of their wealth underground. He proposes the swift introduction of a “Super-Kyoto” system—gathering all consumer countries into a cartel by means of a worldwide, coordinated cap-and-trade system supported by the levying of source taxes on capital income—to spoil the resource owners' appetite for financial assets. Only if we can shift our focus from local demand to worldwide supply policies for reducing carbon emissions, Sinn argues, will we have a chance of staving off climate disaster.

A Supply-Side Approach to Global Warming

The Green Paradox

Clemens Fuest

Sijbren Cnossen

Essays on the theory and practice of public finance and policy. The sixteen essays in this book were written to celebrate the ninetieth birthday of Richard Musgrave and to commemorate the tenth anniversary of CES, the Center for Economic Studies at the University of Munich. Musgrave is considered to be a founding father of modern public economics. He belongs to the intellectual tradition that views government as an instrument that can be used to correct market failure and to establish the society that people want. Although his work fits within the individualistic framework of modern economics, he also draws on principles of moral philosophy. The essays take stock of and extend the theory and practice of public finance and public policy. They address the evolving role of government and the welfare state, the interaction between taxation and markets, the future of pension and health care systems, and international tax issues and fiscal federalism.

Public Finance and Public Policy in the New Century

This book offers a critical assessment of the history of the euro, its crisis, and the rescue measures taken by the European Central Bank and the community of states. The euro induced huge capital flows from the northern to the southern countries of the Eurozone that triggered an inflationary credit bubble in the latter, deprived them of their competitiveness, and made them vulnerable to the financial crisis that spilled over from the US in 2007 and 2008. As private capital shied away from the southern countries, the ECB helped out by providing credit from the local money-printing presses. The ECB became heavily exposed to investment risks in the process, and subsequently had to be bailed out by intergovernmental rescue operations that provided replacement credit for the ECB credit, which itself had replaced the dwindling private credit. The interventions stretched the legal structures stipulated by the Maastricht Treaty which, in the absence of a European federal state, had granted the ECB a very limited mandate. These interventions created a path dependency that effectively made parliaments vicarious agents of the ECB's Governing Council. This book describes what the author considers to be a dangerous political process that undermines both the market economy and democracy, without solving southern Europe's competitiveness problem. It argues that the Eurozone has to rethink its rules of conduct by limiting the role of the ECB, exiting the regime of soft budget constraints and writing off public and bank debt to help the crisis countries breathe again. At the same time, the Eurosystem should become more flexible by offering its members the option of exiting and re-entering the euro - something between the dollar and the Bretton Woods system - until it eventually turns into a federation with a strong political power centre and a uniform currency like the dollar.

On Bursting Bubbles, Budgets, and Beliefs

The Euro Trap

A prominent economist argues in this German bestseller that Germany can rescue its sluggish economy by transforming its social welfare system and reforming its labor market and tax structure, offering insights into economic dilemmas experienced by all advanced economies in a time of globalization. What has happened to the German economic miracle? Rebuilding from the rubble and ruin of two world wars, Germany in the second half of the twentieth century recaptured its economic strength. High-quality German-made products ranging from precision tools to automobiles again conquered world markets, and the country experienced stratospheric growth and virtually full employment. Germany (or West Germany, until 1989) returned to its position as the economic powerhouse of Europe and became the world's third-largest economy after the United States and Japan. But, in recent years, growth has slowed, unemployment has soared, and the economic unification of eastern and western Germany has been mishandled. Europe's largest economy is now outperformed by many of its European neighbors in per capita terms. In Can Germany Be Saved?, Hans-Werner Sinn, one of Germany's leading economists, takes a frank look at his country's economic problems and proposes welfare- and tax-reform measures aimed at returning Germany to its former vigor and vitality. Germany invented the welfare state in the 1880s when Bismarck introduced government-funded health insurance, disability insurance, and pensions; the German system became a model for other industrialized countries. But, Sinn argues, today's German welfare state has incurred immense fiscal costs and destroyed economic incentives. Unemployment has become so lucrative that the private sector, already under pressure from international low-wage competitors, has increasing difficulties in paying sufficiently attractive wages. Sinn traces many of his country's economic problems to an increasingly intractable conflict between Germany's welfare state and the forces of globalization. Can Germany Be Saved? (an updated English-language version of a German bestseller) asks the hard questions - about unions, welfare payments, tax rates, the aging population, and immigration - that all advanced economies need to ask.Its answers, and its call for a radical rethinking of the welfare state, should stir debate and discussion everywhere.

The Malaise of the World's First Welfare State

Can Germany Be Saved?

This book offers a critical assessment of the history of the euro, its crisis, and the rescue measures taken by the European Central Bank and the community of states. The euro induced huge capital flows from the northern to the southern countries of the Eurozone that triggered an inflationary credit bubble in the latter, deprived them of their competitiveness, and made them vulnerable to the financial crisis that spilled over from the US in 2007 and 2008. As private capital shied away from the southern countries, the ECB helped out by providing credit from the local money-printing presses. The ECB became heavily exposed to investment risks in the process, and subsequently had to be bailed out by intergovernmental rescue operations that provided replacement credit for the ECB credit, which itself had replaced the dwindling private credit. The interventions stretched the legal strictures stipulated by the Maastricht Treaty which, in the absence of a European federal state, had granted the ECB a very limited mandate. These interventions created a path dependency that effectively made parliaments vicarious agents of the ECB's Governing Council. This book describes what the author considers to be a dangerous political process that undermines both the market economy and democracy, without solving southern Europe's competitiveness problem. It argues that the Eurozone has to rethink its rules of conduct by limiting the role of the ECB, exiting the regime of soft budget constraints and writing off public and bank debt to help the crisis countries breathe again. At the same time, the Eurosystem should become more flexible by offering its members the option of exiting and re-entering the euro - something between the dollar and the Bretton Woods system - until it eventually turns into a federation with a strong political power centre and a uniform currency like the dollar.

Sinn also asserts that the banking crisis has not yet been resolved. The discrepancy between actual write-offs of toxic debts and those estimated by the IMF suggests that substantial parts of the world debt have yet to be revealed. The banking systems of many countries remain on the brink of insolvency. --

How the Financial Crisis Came About and What Needs to be Done Now

Casino Capitalism

Target balances are the largest single item in some of the balance sheets of the Eurosystem’s national central banks (NCBs), and yet very little is known about them by the general public and even by economists. This book shows that Target balances measure overdraft credits between the NCBs that resemble ordinary fiscal credit and which have grown disproportionately, exceeding one billion euros. There is, however, no parliamentary legitimation for the Target balances. The book sheds light on the economic significance of the balances, questions their limitlessness, and addresses controversial views that have been expressed regarding them. It uses the Target statistics to analyze the course of the euro crisis and the ECB’s policy reactions from the time of the Lehman bankruptcy up to the outbreak of the Corona crisis. It analyses the credit risks involved for the Eurosystem and concludes with a reform proposal. This book will be of interest to non-specialist economists and policy makers.

Hans-Werner Sinn

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