display
In a new international location study on the framework conditions for family businesses, Germany is just ahead of the bottom of the table.
In the annual comparison of 21 industrialized countries by the Mannheim economic research institute ZEW, Germany now only ranks 17th - France, Spain, Japan and Italy perform even worse.
The USA ranks first in this year's “Country Index for Family Businesses”.
It is followed by Great Britain and the Netherlands, as the Family Business Foundation announced on Monday as the client of the study.
ZEW includes many factors in the study: taxes, labor costs, productivity, human capital, regulation, financing, infrastructure and institutions as well as energy.
The client is the Family Business Foundation.
In the previous year, Germany was still in 14th place. The authors of the study see location weaknesses in comparatively high corporate taxes and labor costs.
ZEW Germany attests to another weak point in the quality of its infrastructure, both in terms of traffic routes and information technology.
"In terms of the quality of its infrastructure, Germany now appears to be clearly lagging behind its competitors in Western and Northern Europe, but also in North America and Japan," the study says.
The strengths are therefore the financing and the comparatively good capitalization of German family businesses before the start of the Corona crisis.
The foundation had the country index recorded for the first time in 2006, and Germany has fallen five places since then.
display
No other location studied has developed worse, criticized the foundation.
"Now it is urgently important to make Germany more competitive", demanded foundation board member Rainer Kirchdörfer.
According to the authors of the study, the general conditions for family businesses have developed much better in three neighboring countries and the USA over the past decade and a half: the Netherlands has moved up seven places since 2006, Poland has made up six places, the Czech Republic and the USA four each.