This book contains the revised and updated versions of twelve papers which were presented at the 17th joint seminar of the faculties of economics of the Universities of Nagoya and Freiburg. The seminar took place in 1997 in Nagoya and marked the 25th anniversary of the cooperation between both faculties. The subjects of the book concentrate on long-term economic and business issues common to Japan and Germany on the turn of our century. Firstly, both countries experience continuing and interrelated problems in the labor market, budget deficits, demographic changes and the future of the social security system. Secondly, globalization, technical progress and shift of social values lead to structural changes of the economy and its institutions, particularly to deregulations and network economies. As a consequence, new ways of cooperation between firms, customers and suppliers will be established. Thirdly, the network economy changes also the inner structure and management of the companies in both countries including new organizational patterns such as the holding company or the virtual enterprise, the tight cooperation of small and medium-sized companies, human resource management and compensation. Although the broad issues in both countries - as in other mature economies - are essentially the same, the details under the surface are different and therefore ask for different solutions. The identification of these similarities and differences by theoretical and empirical methods constituted a key objective of the seminar, as well as of previous seminars.

Inhalt
Inhalt: T. Dams, Twenty-Five Years of Cooperation between Nagoya and Freiburg - M. Tsuji, Envisioning the Japanese Economic System in the 21st Century in Relation to Economies of Network - J. Jerger, Nominal Wage Setting and Employment at the Aggregate and Sectoral Level - A. Spermann, Job Creation in the Low-Wage Sector - The Role of Employment Subsidies - H. Uemura / A. Isogai / A. Ebizuka, The Hierarchical Market-Firm Nexus and the Institutional Analysis of the Recent Japanese Economy - T. Yagi, The Roles of the Public Sector Toward the 21st Century - A. Noguchi, Accounting for Stock Options in Japan - H. Tsukada, Budget Deficits in Japan - F. Schober, Information Technology and Organizational Change: How Stable is the Virtual Enterprise? - G. Müller / H. Eggs / J. Englert, Restructuring of Cooperation for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises by Electronic Networks - T. Yoshida, Multiplication of Measurement and Management of Intellectual Capital in Firms - T. Kishida, The Holding Company. An Analysis of Its Organizational Form