Möglichkeiten und Grenzen der Wachstumspolitik

Growth Policy Opportunities and Limits The scope for growth policy action has contracted todate as a result of a variety of changes. The growth weakness in the Federal Republic of Germany is to be explained, in part, by changes “exogenous” conditions that are, to a large extent, not subject to political influence. Another source of growth-dampening effects are change in the structure of social preferences that are not only difficult to influence by economic policy instruments, but are, moreover, justifiable in welfare theory terms to a very limited extent only. However, even where growth policy is, as a matter of principle, in a position to avail itself of effective instruments, the scope for action is limited: in monetary and financial policies, the scope for expansionary action has narrowed as a result of mismanagement by financial policy-makers. Consequently, there is a demand mainly for allocation policy. Although this offers a variety of meaningful policy options as a result of shifts in government spending away from subsidies toward public investment in areas suffering from bottlenecks, of reforming corporate taxation and of increasing the flexibility of goods markets and the labour market, these are precisely the fields in which the political and – understandably in some subareas – the social resistance is especially strong. Moreover, such changes in allocative framework conditions mean delays in the economic process that are relatively long so that policy-makers must be particularly long-winded. Overall, the chances that growth policy is in a position to contribute to a noticeable acceleration of the pace of growth in the Federal Republic of Germany must be considered to be fairly limite