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Richard Hauser Irene Becker Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University, FrankfurtlMain This volume marks the end of a research project of the editors titled'The Devel­ opment of the Personal Distribution of Income in Germany'that was financed by the Hans Bockler Foundation from 1994 to 2001. This research concentrated on a national perspective, studying many aspects of income inequality and poverty in West Germany between 1969 and 1998 and extending the analyses to inequality in East Germany after the German reunification. Now at the end point of our empiri­ cal analyses, we want to expand the perspective to other research in this field, to challenges for future research, and to the European dimension, rather than to summarise all our results, which is done in another bookl. In 2001, the German goverrunent published its first Poverty and Wealth Re­ 2 port, which also draws on results from our research project. Thus, the intention of this volume is threefold: presenting and advancing Gernlan reporting on poverty in other coun­ and wealth, examining experience with advanced reporting schemes tries, and discussing comparative concepts for social monitoring in the European Union.

The current work is the third volume in the se ries'Europe's Economic Future', edited by Strasbourg's Robert Schuman University, under the direction of Professor Sabine Urban, head of the CESAG-IECS research center. This series intends to analyze the European situation -not through idealized models of operation or abstract schemas - rather based on concrete observations, equally elose to the actions and the life of the European citizen as of Europe's corporations and institutions. The studies that are presented here are not, however, simply descriptions; they refer to precise conceptual frameworks and nourish a long-term reflection. This volume, like its predecessors, reflects the diversity which characterizes Europe, rich and stimulating but, at the same time, difficult to manage. Spectacular advances are followed by moments of hesitation. With European construction, new processes of adaptation and new competitive strategies must be implemented by businesses. Public authorities must respect the convergence constraints imposed by the European Union (Maastricht I) and imagine a modified institutional framework for the European Intergovernmental Conference of 1996 (Maastricht II). The citizens of the fifteen countries involved need themselves to be enlightened about the future, to understand how - between independent markets and coordinated policies - a desirable economic and social cohesion in the European area will be realized. Furthermore, the area itself is not fixed; it is evolving between the strengthening of links and the opening of new horizons.

Proposing an aggregative conception of vulnerability, this book provides a new framework for understanding individual experience of, and resilience to, vulnerability and promotes the need to find remedies for exposure to involuntary dependence, the unsecured future and the painful past.

Macroeconomic adjustment and sectoral reforms have strongly modified the framework for rural development in Central America. This book offers a structural analysis of agrarian policies in Central America and their impact on production conditions and farmers'welfare.

For centuries Japan, although a totalitarian dictatorship, was ruled by figureheads who signed laws formulated'behind the screen'. Hierarchy still defines everyone's status. The man at the top has power but jeopardizes his position if he ignores consensus opinions. Nowadays fashionable twentieth-century clothing cloaks a contradictory blend of intense competition with a tradition of harmony dependent on close human-relations and complex communal restraint. The Japanese organise themselves in cliques (not groups) which raise barriers against outsiders. Companies are controlled from within; shareholders are outsiders. Women are more than equal in their homes; less than equal at work. After living and managing his own business in Japan for forty years, the author explored widely before coining the term'competitive communism'to describe Japan's economic and social system.

Following Ronald Reagan's statement to the Soviet press that living standards in the USSR were a third of that in the USA, this book was written to examine the CIA study upon which his statement was based. The author also analyzes the Soviet economy and reveals how Soviets really live.