This will be a practical conference with five speakers. Each speaker will advance proposals for economic reform in the areas of taxes, pensions, health care, labour market, and competition policy.

Introductory remarks
Hardy Bouillon
Centre for the New Europe

"Irish Proposals for a German Tax Reform"
Constantin T. Gurdgiev
Trinity College Dublin

"Britain´s Pension Reform: A Model for Germany?"
David Willetts
MP, London

"Reform of Germany´s Health Care Market"
Stefan Felder
University Clinic, Magdeburg

"Declining Growth Rates, Unemployment, and Trade Union Power in Germany 1950 - 2002. Lessons for the German Labour Market"
Charles Blankart
Humboldt University Berlin

"Germany´s competition policy within the EU revisited"
Karen Horn
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

Closing remarks
Hardy Bouillon
Centre for the New Europe

Constantin T. Gurdgiev is a lecturer at Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland, Department of Economics since 2000, and the director of the Open Republic Institute – a Dublin-based market policy think-tank and the European Research Training Network. He worked at several universities; among others, Johns Hopkins University, USA. His main emphasis of research focuses on Open Economy Macroeconomics and International Finance. His academic and policy publications have appeared in several scientific and professional journals, policy magazines and newspapers..

David Willetts has been MP for Havant (GB) since 1992. He has written widely on economic and social policy. His book Modern Conservatism was published by Penguin in 1992, Civic Conservatism was published in 1995 and his pamphlet Blair's Gurus in 1996. His most recent pamphlets are Browned-Off: What's Wrong with Gordon Brown's Social Policy published by Politeia, and A Raw Deal for Lone Parents published by the Centre for Policy Studies.

Prof. Dr. Stefan Felder, Professor of Health Economics at the University of Magdeburg, is executive director of the Institute of Social Medicine and Health Economics (ISMHE), which is part of the medical faculty of his university. He is also adviser to Electric Power Research Institute in California, Worldbank, WHO, and to many banks, insurance companies and sick funds, and publishes widely in the field of health economics and beyond. Among his recent books are Ökonomische Analyse des Alterungsprozesses (together with Peter Zweifel), Bern 1996 and Steuerreformen aus dynamischer Sicht. Resultate aus einem Simulationsmodell mit zwei Haushaltsklassen, Bern 1996.

Prof. Dr. Charles Blankart, Economics Professor at the Humboldt University of Berlin (Institute of Public Finance), who taught also at La Sapienza, Rom, Center for Study of Public Choice, George Mason University, Fairfax, Va, Technical University Berlin and the Bundeswehr University Munich, is a member of several scientific societies, among others the Mont Pelerin Society. He also serves as vice-chairman of the academic advisory board to the the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology. He has published widely in the field of public finance and beyond. He is author of numerous publications, among these Öffentliche Finanzen in der Demokratie, München (Vahlen), 3rd edition, 1998. Dr.

Karen Horn is economics editor for Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung based in the newspaper headquarters in Frankfurt, specializing in Economic Science and Economic Policy. She wrote her thesis on the necessity and the conditions of reform for the German system of fiscal grants in the course of reunification. She worked as a Teaching and Research Assistant in the Department for Public Finance and served as a lecturer in Economics and Banking for Credit Suisse. At the same time, she wrote book reviews for the FAZ on a free-lance basis. She is author of Moral und Wirtschaft, Tübingen (Mohr) 1996.