Reports 2006
The Foundation’s publications present the findings from its research and events on significant contemporary economic, political and social issues in a concise and accessible format. You can download all recent publications free of charge from this site (see link for each publication below).
Making Bad Jobs Better Jobs
Trade unions and the low paid sector in Germany and the UK
Conference Report
Anglo-German Foundation, Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung and Hans-Böckler-Stiftung
Transforming bad jobs into better jobs is a huge challenge – and a huge opportunity – for trade unions in Germany and the UK. It represents an opportunity to find ways of advancing the specific interests of particular groups among their members. These include the low-paid, those doing less interesting jobs with poorer career prospects, women, and migrant workers: all groups that many unions have marginalised (if not ignored) in the past. In July 2006 some 30 British and German trade unionists – from leaders and senior policymakers to workplace organisers – academics and commentators met at the Trades Union Forum in London to discuss these issues.
November 2006
By Joseph Szarka and Ingolfur Blühdorn
Despite having only average wind conditions, Germany has the largest operating capacity of wind power in the world and enjoys world leadership in the manufacture of wind turbines. In contrast, the UK has the best wind resource in Europe but little installed capacity and an underdeveloped manufacturing base. This report analyses this starkly contrasting development and identifies the underlying reasons for it. These include not just the now widely acknowledged advantages of the German ‘feed-in tariff’ as compared to the quota system employed n the UK, but the wider institutional and socio-economic contexts which support and underpin these instruments. Perhaps the most important among these is a stable investment environment. The report also proposes a set of policy recommendations based on its analysis.
November 2006, ISBN 1-900834-62-6
The British Banking System
A good role model for Germany?
By Andrew Mullineux and Eva Terberger
The German financial system is a prototype of a bank-based system. In the 1980s, this was considered an important pillar of Germany’s economic strength. Nowadays, Germany is characterised as being overbanked and its banking system inefficient (relatively high cost), not particularly profitable and in need of radical restructuring and the need to reform the German financial system has been widely discussed. Does the British financial system provide a good role model? This study tackles this question with regard to the supply of retail banking services to households and micro and small enterprises (MSEs).
June 2006, ISBN 1-900834-61-8
By Nick Bloom, Tobias Kretschmer and John Van Reenen
Achieving work-life balance is often seen as being in conflict with good management, competition and globalization. Recent research by the Centre for Economic Performance and McKinsey on over 700 companies in Europe and the US shows that this is not true, with work-life balance strongly associated with good management and weakly associated with competition and globalization.
May 2006, ISBN 1-900834-60-X