CNE Monatsmagazin Digest
April 2008

English Summary

Good school: In an interview, Dr. Karen Horn, Head of the Berlin Office of Germany's leading private market research institute IW (Institute der deutschen Wirtschaft Köln) and, most recently, CNE-Senior Fellow, said: "As Senior Fellow I shall carry my can for CNE, write market orientated essays and participate in manifold activities. I shall develop new formats, help start new CNE activities in Germany and find new partners to put these through. IW and CNE have several overlappings here", Horn summarizes.

Market economy in schools: To Gerd Habermann the main reason for the currently declining interest in market economy, freedom and entrepreneurship rests in the fact, "that our entire education system is under governmental tutelage. Not only do we learn in school how to read and write. School teaches us also views, identifications and economic perspectives. In this area the views and mentality of public servants dominate. Age-old anti-capitalist myths and prejudices of the 19th century are schleped from one textbook edition to the next", says Habermann.

Market economy into schools: Some textbooks are better than others. The Vienna-based Hayek Institut presented a new economics textbook for higher education that explains pupils the functioning of the markets according to Austrian Economics. The fully booked book launch was introduced by Austria's minister of science, Johannes Hahn. Hardy Bouillon spoke on the reasons for economic myths in ordinary school textbooks.

Learn how to write: "For decades social critics in the United States and throughout the Western world have complained that "property" rights too often take precedence over "human" rights, with the result that people are treated unequally and have unequal opportunities. Inequality exists in any society. But the purported conflict between property rights and human rights is a mirage - property rights are human rights." This quote from Armen Alchian is the topic of this year's Sir John M. Templeton Fellowship Essay Contest.

Universities and market economy: German universities do not treat their students well. One hardly can recommend German academics to pursue their career back home, says Gunnar Sohn. Domestic students are not appropriately prepared for the market. According to Sohn, improvement in this field is highly desirable. "More than 30 per cent of US-graduates start their own business upon leaving university. These are numbers we only could dream of in Germany", Sohn resumes.

The last word: "The one story the government would like to come out of the budget is its 'action' on that supposed environmental menace, plastic bags", says Stephen Pollard. "But a superb piece of reporting in Saturday's Times made clear that this is one of the great myths of our time. The widely stated accusation that the bags kill 100,000 animals and a million seabirds every year are (sic) false. This figure is based on a misinterpretation of a 1987 Canadian study in Newfoundland, which found that, between 1981 and 1984, more than 100,000 marine mammals, including birds, were killed by discarded nets. The Canadian study did not mention plastic bags", Pollard adds.

Click here to view the full Monatsmagazin in German.

Dr. Hardy Bouillon is Head of Academic Affairs at the Centre for the New Europe.