Klaus Schöler

Regional Market Areas at the EU Border

With the enlargement of the European Union (EU) and the negotiations with potential member countries and further candidates, the question arises how to form the relationship to non-EU countries. The enlargement leads to new borders in new areas and to enlarged external frontiers with cross-frontier trade and markets. Therefore, at the new EU border many new regional markets will emerge, in which - on the basis of lower production costs in many industries in non-EU countries - an import pressure arises. This import pressure calls for a political answer. In the past, the EU gave many different regional answers which produced preferential trade for more than 25% of the whole EU trade with non-EU countries. In 1996, there was a hierarchy of EC trade regimes: in Eastern and South-Eastern Europe, a free-trade area (Europe Agreements) covered Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, the Slovak Republic and Slovenia. In the Mediterranean area, there was a custom union with Turkey; free trade areas included Israel, Cyprus and Malta. Non-reciprocal contractual preferences were agreed with Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Lebanon, Syria and Tunisia (Sapier 1998). This trade policy followed the lines of general foreign policy, and the traditional policy of some EU states was based on interests in certain regional areas. Furthermore, the trade policy of the EU may not be understood without an investigation of the design and evolution of EU institutions (Bilal 1998).

Consistent conjectural variations in a two-dimensional spatial market

Abstract In this paper we calculate the consistent conjectural price variation on the basis of spatial competition models for alternative market shapes. It can be shown that these variation coefficients depend on the geographic size as well as on the shape of the market area. The use of consistent conjectural variation coefficients reveals two important results. On the one hand, we can show that Hotelling/Smithies competition allows a sufficient approximation to the consistent results, and on the other hand we demonstrate that hexagonal market areas create the highest welfare effects under consistent solutions.

Öffentliche Unternehmen aus raumwirtschaftlicher Sicht

In nicht wenigen Fallen sind offentliche Unternehmen in der raumlichen Ausdehnung ihrer Aktivitaten begrenzt und versorgen eine Stadt oder einen Verbund von Gemeinden. Man kann beispielsweise an Verkehrsbetriebe, Versorgungsunternehmen, Wohnungsgesellschaften und andere kommunale Betriebe denken. Fur den weitaus grosten Teil der Unternehmen, die ihre Leistungen regional begrenzt anbieten, sind zwei Besonderheiten zu beobachten: (1) Innerhalb des Versorgungs- oder Marktgebietes ist der offentliche Anbieter haufig Monopolist. (2) Das Versorgungsgebiet deckt sich mit den kommunalen oder regionalen Verwaltungsgrenzen. Die Tatsache der monopolistischen Marktform kann in vielen Fallen (Strasenbahnen, Wasserwerke, Gaswerke) mit der Existenz eines naturlichen Monopols begrundet werden; innerhalb eines relevanten Bereichs der Produktionsmengen sind die Grenzkosten und Durchschnittskosten monoton fallend. Daraus lasst sich aber in keiner Weise das zweite Phanomen erklaren; es ist sicherlich ein uberaus seltener Grenzfall, wenn das okonomisch optimale Versorgungsgebiet mit dem administrativ gegebenen Verwaltungsgebiet ubereinstimmt. Es stellt sich somit zunachst die Frage nach der Ausdehnung des okonomisch optimalen Marktgebiets eines offentlichen Unternehmens, unabhangig — wie in der Okonomik ublich — von der Grose des zugehorigen Verwaltungsgebiets. Eine zweite Frage schliest sich an, die grundsatzlicher und tiefgreifender ist: Ist die offentliche Versorgung — unter sonst gleichen Bedingungen — vorteilhafter als eine privatwirtschaftliche Leistungserstellung? Beiden Fragen geht der vorliegende Beitrag nach.

Business climate as a leading indicator? An empirical investigation for west Germany from 1978 to 1990

For twenty-five years now, the leading indicator “Business Climate” of the Ifo Institute has been applied in the Federal Republic of Germany. The intent of this note is to provide answers to two questions by means of econometric methods. The first question is: Is the business climate really a leading indicator? The second question is: How much time is the indicator ahead? For verification and in order to respond to both questions, the Granger causality test is used in the version of Hsiao.

International Trade and Spatial Markets

In a time marked by enlarged economic regions transcending national borders and continuously growing international trade the question rises anew, if traditional Ricardian theory and Neo-Ricardian approaches to the theory of international trade hold as valid and sufficient explanations of international trade flows. Early doubts by August Losch, raised in an age of protection and autarchy, despite not having provoked a substantial rethinking among scholars over the past sixty years, they have become ever more appropriate through the emergence of integrated regional markets in Europe and elsewhere around the world. Therefore, it seems worthwhile to take a closer look at Losch’s competing, explicitly spatial approach.