Sicherheit und Risiko

ESPRIT St.Gallen Business Review
cal German superiority in any of these sectors, nor is it
simply the unearned fruit of especially weak or dispirited
competitors. Germany’s ongoing economic success,
fraught with risks and instability though it may
be, stems from a series of government-led efforts geared
toward reducing the country’s high average labor
costs and creating greater employment flexibility. These
measures were implemented during the first half of
the 2000 decade and subsequently allowed Germany
to take unprecedented advantage of Europe’s common
market – by consistently out-competing its neighbors
(see Figure 1).
Beginning in 2003, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder’s
government instituted a series of “pro-growth” labor
market and welfare state reforms known as Agenda
2010, which curtailed unemployment and healthcare
benefits, and reduced old-age pension levels (while
raising the age of initial eligibility). It was a marked
shift from the climate of high manufacturing wages
and secure jobs, which had prevailed in Germany for
decades. The result was the emergence of a sizeable
low-wage sector, characterized by greater employment
vulnerability and increasingly occupied by temporary,
seasonal, and other kinds of flexible workers. As Figure
2 shows, German labor costs, which used to be
among the highest in Europe, fell significantly below
the Eurozone’s average. Around the middle of the decade,
German firms began to reap the benefits of their
new low-wage workforce, which in combination with
heavy capital investment and government subsidies
for advanced production technologies, allowed the nation
to become extremely competitive in high-valueadded
exports. Given the favorable exchange rate that
had been applied to the Deutsche Mark during the
introduction of the Euro, these developments further
enhanced Germany’s economic advantage relative to
its neighbors.
Yet in Europe’s common market, as in any market
framework, there are winners and losers. In the
European Union, the Greek people are perhaps the
most clear-cut losers, despite the supposed benefits
offered by EU membership. After joining the union
in 1981, Greece became a major recipient of intra-
EU transfer payments. The introduction of the Euro
further enhanced the Greek government‘s fiscal capacity,
allowing it to issue debt in a competitive currency
on global financial markets. Greek leaders, however,
did not spend this capital wisely – at least not in the
eyes of global financial markets. Heavy investment in
infrastructure upgrades and national modernization
Trends in EU labor costs
Source: OECD.Stat. Dataset: Unit Labour Costs - Annual Indicators. http://stats.oecd.org/ (accessed November 5, 2012).
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Winter 2012