Study title

The central theme of this publication is the localization of the East German economy into the inner German economy by means of the comparison of the two German economies. The investigator begins with a description of the socialist transformation in the Soviet Zone / GDR after 1945 and their implications. The conditions in the Soviet Union were the example for the system change in the Soviet zone, because the Soviet Union as a pioneering state in the Eastern bloc, pionted the way of future economic development, served as a model and as a shield, and had a significant influence on future economic developments. After the presentation of the socialist transformation, which began in 1945 and its effects, a brief comparative sketch of the competitiveness of the two German states in international comparison and an analysis of the human capital stock of the GDR follows. In another chapter Oskar Schwarzer carried out an efficiency analysis of the East German economy. He looks at the growth of the economy, investment, foreign trade, subsidies and debt of the GDR. One problem is the comparability of the GDR´s currency and prices to non-socialist countries. Schwarzer compiled extensive source material for his investigation. It includes detailed statistics of the overall social product and the national income of the GDR in the period of 1949 to 1989 in GDR mark. Moreover it contains the statistics on conversion ratio of the GDR-Mark to convertible currencies and on the leading currency as well as on the currency structure of the foreign trade. The researcher focuses on an important methodological problem in this context: the conversion of the GDR mark in DM. He looks at possible options and data sources for the computation of a standardized exchange rate surrogate for the conversion of the GDR mark in DM. These surrogates for a standardized conversion coefficient should supersede a non-existing exchange rate. They were used to convert the calculated GDP in GDR-Marks into DM...