Although Berlin Wall came down 25 years ago and the German government has invested billions in the economic and social transformation of Eastern Germany, the Eastern German economy can barely keep pace with the tremendous economic growth in Western Germany. Against the most logical assumption, the transformation from a communist market system into free-marketism is not the reason for the lack of growth and business infrastructure. Indeed, the economic strength of Western Germany causes businesses and skilled workers to move to the more industrialized and more popular venues in the West and therefore a lack of leading firms that stimulate innovation and growth.
Nevertheless, Eastern Germany has a lot of potential – not least because of the booming chemical and optical industry. Berlin is a ray of hope, too, as the buzzing German capital is known for disruptive innovation as well as uniquely new approaches to business problems considered as unsolvable and the problem of unequal growth can most likely be tackled with successful entrepreneurship.
Now the question arises, how it can be made more attractive for Eastern Germans to open up their own businesses or for Western entrepreneurs to move west. One factor is definitely the currently extremely low interest rate level in Europe, which forces savers (that Eastern Germans tend to be) to find new ways to invest their money and allows entrepreneurs to get cheap business loans. Still, the German government will have to create some form of (financial) incentive for Eastern German start-ups and try to move more state-owned corporations west as role models in order to bring the unequal German siblings to a common level again.
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http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/Berlinermauer.jpg
