Institutions affect economic growth 24. June 2008 by Thomas Jannot By international comparison, the best institutional conditions for economic growth are to be found in Australia. 15 years ago Australia was still in the eight position in this ranking list. Now it ranks ahead of the United States and the Netherlands. Germany currently comes 11th in this table of 24 countries while it ranked seventh …
Foreign trade in high-tech products loses momentum 23. June 2008 by Thomas Jannot According to BITKOM, the German Association for Information Management, Telecommunications and New Media, foreign trade in communications and information technology was less intensive in the first quarter of 2008. The volume of exports decreased by 11.5% to 10.1 billion Euros as compared to the first quarter in 2007. At the same time imports shrank by …
New database facilitates patent applications 20. June 2008 by Thomas Jannot To companies wishing to apply for international patents the new “Inpafamdb” (International Patent Family Database) provided by the FIZ in Karlsruhe is a very useful tool making business easier. The database gives a quick and comprehensive overview of the state of the art and precious information on the activities of market participants on the global …
More employees in German processing industry 19. June 2008 by Thomas Jannot About 5.3 million people worked in the German processing industry as of the end of April 2008 which is an increase by almost 150.000 people or 2.9% as compared to April last year. In the same period the number of hours worked increased even more significantly by 15.4% to 752 million hours. In April 2008, …
Full employment of engineers reached in Germany 17. June 2008 by Thomas Jannot According to the Association of German Engineers (VDI) the number of unemployed engineers once more fell in May 2008. Currently there are only 22.000 unemployed engineers which corresponds to a decrease by 3.5% as compared to April this year. “We have virtually achieved full employment on the labour market for engineers“, is the comment by …
Dresden is the German high-tech centre 17. June 2008 by Thomas Jannot Almost unnoticed Dresden has developed into Germany’s most important high-tech centre. In this city 8.7% of all employees work in the high-tech sector. This includes people working in the manufacture of IT devices, consumer electronics and medical engineering as well as researchers and software developers. The second and third most important high-tech regions are Greater …
German mechanical engineering once more world champion 16. June 2008 by Thomas Jannot 2007 was yet another successful year for international trade in machines and equipment which grew by 11.7%. “German exports increased by 10.6%”, said Manfred Wittenstein who is chairman of the German association for mechanical and plant engineering (VDMA). This places Germany on top of the list of the world’s most important exporting countries of such …
2.2 million Germans bet on the internet 13. June 2008 by Thomas Jannot Betting online is becoming more and more popular. Currently there are about 2.2 million Germans who bet and gamble on the internet. Most of the time the amounts of money at stake are small, says the German Association for Information Management, Telecommunications and New Media (BITKOM). Half a million Germans bet on sports events, in …
Downloads becoming popular among people over fifty 13. June 2008 by Thomas Jannot The market for legal downloads of music, audio books, videos, games and software continues booming. In the first quarter 2008 Germans carried out 12 million downloads to the value of 52 million Euros which is an increase by 30% in comparison with the same period last year. In particular the interest by people older than …
Corporate social responsibility boosts young brands 12. June 2008 by Thomas Jannot At the institute for psychology at the Johannes Gutenberg-University in Mainz one student in his diploma thesis dealt with the question of how a brand is perceived by consumers if a company operates socially responsibly. The finding: the more unknown or younger a brand, the more the corporate social responsibility of a company influences the …