The coming years will be crucial for the path Germany takes over the long term. An ageing society, tight fiscal constraints, the emerging knowledge economy and new competition from Asia and other parts of the world are just a few of the challenges which Germany has to face up to.

To take the right decisions for the future German business and policymakers need to understand how these and other structural changes will interact in the future. We have therefore set out to sketch what paths of development are conceivable, and consistent, for the German economy and society in the future on the basis of an innovative scenario analysis. And we have gone one step further and identified “Expedition Deutschland” as the most plausible of our scenarios for the year 2020.

Publication Germany 2020 - New challenges for a land on expedition
Summary of the publication
Presentation: Germany 2020: New challenges for a land on expedition - and food for thought for the EU
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Publication Women on expedition to 2020: The path to more gender equity in Germany

Germany 2020 – A short overview

Methodology of our advanced scenario analysis

The aim of our project “Germany 2020” is to analyse the structural changes facing us over the next one-and-a-half decades and their impact on the German economy and society. In order to be able to address this complex topic we have advanced the conventional scenario analysis method. This has enabled us not only to reduce the complexity in a systematic manner but also to identify which of our four alternative pictures of the future is the most plausible. [more]