hu wissen (pdf) - Exzellenzinitiative - Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

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3.6 percent. This was the magic
number that cheered the hearts of Germany’s business leaders
when Germany’s economy grew by this impressive fi gure in 2010.
The country’s gross domestic product (GDP) had not grown so
strongly since German reunifi cation – and this just a year a� er the
severe recession that had been triggered by the global fi nancial
and economic crisis.
Few economists had reckoned with such a success – although
one of the exceptions was Professor Michael Burda: »Germany
acted quickly and with political skill. The fl exible regulations on
working hours contributed enormously to German industry’s swi�
recovery. Full order books today mean more production, more exports
and more jobs,« explains the Professor of Economic Theory
II at Humboldt-Universität’s School of Business and Economics.
Macroeconomists study a country’s overall economic performance,
its GDP, which measures the value of all the goods and
services that have been produced in a country within a year. Germany’s
economy had only grown by 15 percent from 1995 to 2010.
But now, in 2010 alone, exports rose by 14.2 percent. »People
abroad want goods made in Germany,« says American-born Burda.
»They associate the country with durable export goods like
cars and machinery.«
Whether you’re talking about bank regulation, national debt,
insolvency or the labour market – economics links everything, he
says. This is why for years he has been studying the extent to
which exports, investment and consumption are also connected
with risk, regulation and reform. A� er all, even a small change in
the cogwheel of the global market cycle can have serious repercussions.
»Mismanagement was the cause of the fi nancial and economic
crisis that broke out in 2009. The motto in the US was that every
citizen should be able to aff ord to buy their home – with the result
that mortgages were also granted to citizens with a poor credit
rating.« And these mortgages were simply transformed into new
securities and resold. »When some of these mortgages were no
longer being repaid, a mountain of toxic securities built up, some
of which were owned by European banks,« explains Burda.
But what is a risk in fact? And how much eff ort is justifi ed in
order to reduce it? Let’s take the example of damage caused by a
storm that has not yet happened, but could happen. Statistically,
the expected value of the damage is calculated as the product of
the probability of the occurrence and the scale of the damage.
»Then you have to add the psychological and cultural dimensions,«
says Burda. The more coincidental a feared event is, and
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