Felix Butschek war zwischen 1962 und 1997 im WIFO beschäftigt, zunächst als Mitarbeiter für Sozialpolitik und Regionalfragen,
später auch als Stellvertretender Leiter des Institutes. Seine sehr breit angelegten Forschungsagenden und seine lebendigen,
zeitnahen und durchaus auch kontroversiellen Diskussionsbeiträge haben das Institut und seine Belegschaft stark beeinflusst.
Mit der Zeit widmete er sich immer mehr wirtschaftshistorischen Themen und Fragestellungen.
Österreichs Standortqualität wird vor dem Hintergrund nachhaltigen Wirtschaftens und der "Beyond-GDP"-Ziele der Europäischen
Kommission nicht nur von ökonomischen, sondern verstärkt auch von sozialen und ökologischen Indikatoren bestimmt. Gemessen
an sozialen und ökologischen Faktoren liegt Österreich im europäischen Spitzenfeld. Determinanten dafür sind hohe Sozialstandards
mit effizienter Mittelverwendung, kaufkraftstärkende Umverteilungsmaßnahmen der öffentlichen Hand und Investitionen in den
Sozialstaat. Eine Verstärkung der Investitionen kann die Standortqualität von Österreich verbessern.
Hans Seidel bezeichnet die wirtschaftlichen Erfolge der Regierung Kreisky, gemessen an den üblichen ökonomischen Kennzahlen,
als beeindruckend. Er merkt allerdings an, dass die Regierung Budgetdefizite hinterließ, die von den nachfolgenden Regierungen
beseitigt werden mussten.
Hans Seidel setzt sich in seinem letzten Buch mit der Kreisky-Periode auseinander. Er untersucht, wie die Herausforderungen
zweier schwerer Erdölpreiskrisen besser gemeistert werden konnten als im Ausland. Neben der bewährten Sozialpartnerschaft
trugen dazu vor allem die neuentwickelten Konzepte der Hartwährungspolitik und des Austro-Keynesianismus bei.
WWWforEurope: Welfare, Wealth and Work for Europe, January 2016, 15 pages
Commissioned by: European Commission
Supported by: Österreichische Forschungsförderungsgesellschaft mbH – Austrian Agency for International Cooperation in Education and Research – OeAD-GmbH
Collectively agreed reductions of working hours phased out in Europe in the 1990ies. During the last two decades, working
time became more flexible and heterogeneous. Working hours of full-time employees in the EU hardly changed. The strong increase
in part-time work was the outstanding phenomenon. Today, one third of female employees and almost 10 percent of male employees
work part-time. In a period of slow growth, productivity gains will be squeezed by subdued investment and low capacity utilisation.
Thus, a smaller pie will be available either for real wage increases or for working time reductions. In this situation, it
will be politically even more difficult to find an agreement on shorter working hours than in past decades. Since the productivity
and employment effects of a working time reduction in a low-growth period are quite uncertain, social partners must be willing
to negotiate again when the effects become apparent.
The WWWforEurope project's central goals are to identify the forces and challenges necessitating deliberations on a new growth
path, to define socio-ecological transition, key actors and main obstacles, and to find out how the process of a socio-ecological
transition can be initiated, monitored, and accelerated on an institutional level (EU, national and regional level). The paper
focuses on the concepts of sustainability, growth, innovation, welfare and well-being, wealth and work. We also look at the
various dimensions and definitions of transition and transformation which can be found in the literature, trying to concretise
the concept of a socio-ecological transition forming the context and starting point of the WWWforEurope project.
Inspired by Dornbusch's model of exchange rate overshooting we develop a theory of stock market behaviour and its impact on
the real economy. The idea is that stock market prices overshoot and undershoot their long-run equilibrium values which are
determined by the development in the real economy. The overshooting is triggered primarily by a loose monetary policy. With
our model we explain the genesis of the global financial crisis 2008–2009 primarily as the result of a loose monetary policy
in the USA. Following the overshooting and crash in the stock market the real economy dropped into a recession. After modelling
the interaction of three markets with different speed of adjustment – money, stocks and goods – for a closed economy we expand
it to an open economy and lastly study the spillovers of a financial market crisis between countries (from a large to a small
country) by introducing the transmission channels of external trade or cross-border financial transactions. A long-lasting
monetary easing as exhibiting by the Fed and the ECB since 2007 and 2008, respectively, could – according to our model – generate
another boom-bust cycle.
An analysis of the monetary authorities' reports for 2005 to 2007 reveals that they were well aware of the risks of the financial
crisis. They, however, tended to overemphasise the risks outside their control and to neglect those, at least partially under
their control. Central banks should and could have acted already in 2005. Academic studies and their own assessments clearly
indicated an accumulation of risks. Monetary authorities didn't react as 1. they believe in self-regulating markets, and 2.
in monetary instruments' ineffectiveness to prevent bubbles, as well as 3. their tendency to assigning an extremely low probability
to potential risks. This is not untypical for expert assessments: Risk assessment for complex systems is extremely complicated.
If feasible at all, it would require extraordinarily complex techniques to take into account the tight coupling of system
components and their complex interaction. This will not be possible in the foreseeable future. As a result reducing the system's
complexity appears to be the only way to reduce the probability and the severity of future financial crises.