Die gesellschaftlichen Kosten wirtschaftlichen Niedergangs
Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte
Zusammenfassung der Projektergebnisse
This project aims at assessing regional differences in the ``shock of reunification’’ across East Germany. It is motivated by the fact that some East German industries were relatively more productive relative to the West German benchmark than others upon reunification, and that different sectors and industries were rather concentrated in some regions of the country. It can thus be assumed that the economic ``shock of reunification’’ varied throughout East Germany, and hence also the economic downturn that hit the former German Democratic Republic in the aftermath of reunification. This project has been designated towards the creation of a suitable data set to test the stated hypothesis. It combines a variety of different data sources resulting in three harmonized panel data sets at different jurisdictional levels. The productivity measures stem from previous studies, geo-coded data on the universe of firms and employees as well as correspondence tables from historical archives. The published data sets present the results of these efforts and can be used by other researchers. They should yet be considered as preliminary, in the sense that additional data on local relative productivity with better coverage of industries outside manufacturing will be added. Users are thus advised to contact the applicant before data usage. The created datasets will be used to assess the question whether local differences in the residing industries’ relative productivity can explain differences in the economic downturn in the aftermath of reunification, outmigration, and possibly also societal and political developments in recent years. As of now, findings of this analysis remain preliminary and have not been disseminated. However, first descriptive results suggest that regions with lower relative productivity indeed saw stronger declines in local employment, especially in manufacturing.
