Too big to fail. Is Volkswagen systemically important for the German Economy? (PDF)

Essay from the year 2016 in the subject Economics - Case Scenarios, grade: 3,0, Private University of Applied Sciences Goettingen, language: English, abstract: The Volkswagen Group (VW) is one of the world¿s leading automobile manufacturers and the largest carmaker in Europe, based in Wolfsburg, Germany. On September 18th, 2015, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a press release regarding a "Notice of Violation" (NOV) of the Clean Air Act (CAA) to the Volkswagen. Due to these recent emissions issues, especially in the North American Regions, an essential question is: "What would happen in case of a failure of VW?" With regard to this question, the subject of this academic paper is an analysis whether VW can be categorized as a systemically important company. For this, firstly a definition of "systemic importance" will be given in chapter 2. Subsequently the main indicators, which characterize a company as systemical important, will be introduced. Furthermore various examples of government interverntion in Germany, like for example the rescue of the construction company Holzmann, will revealed at the end of the second chapter.

The third chapter concentrates on VW per se. Intention of this chapter is to provide a brief overview of the main facts related to VW. Therefore firstly the key figures of VW will be introduced in terms of volume data like for instance sales volume, sales revenue or workforce as well as in terms of financial data, like for instance operating earnings. Subsequently the key points of the emissions issue related to various diesel engines will be depicted. Chapter 2.3 focusses on the impacts due to the emissions issue on VW. Content of chapter four is an analysis of systemical importance of the VW Group, which will be conducted based on the collected set of information about VW in chapter 3, with regard to the indicators for systemical importance, introduced in chapter 2.1. Subsequently a critical statement on the main question of this academic paper, "Is VW systemically important for the German economy?" will be infered based on the results of the analysis. Finally chapter 5 summarizes the main findings, gained by the analysis of systemical important characteristics of the Volkswagen group.