(1978-2009)
Introduction
About 16 years ago, when European Community became European Union(hereinafter to be referred as EU) , the Netherlands and Germany, as two founding members of the EU, have been played an important role in European and world's economy.
When talked about Dutch economy, East indies company must be a start. As the first company in the world, it helped the Netherlands to be the leader of world's economy seventeenth century and to build Dutch entrepreneurship. The capital city of the Netherlands, Amsterdam, use to be the financial and business centre of the world. Later, Dutch economy has seen by many declined for a while. But, since 1980s, dutch government has reduced intervention, dutch economy become more prosperous and open again.
To the east of the Netherlands, Germany stands in the central europe, as the largest national economy in Europe, ranked fourth by nominal GDP and fifth by GDP (PPP) in the world in 2008. After the industrialization, this country has become a driver and innovator in global economy. Especially when west and east Germany unified in 1990, the country's economy went out from the recession after second war's big hit.
Compared these two countries' economic development, there are a lot similarities and differences due to its close position in Europe continent, culture background, and even history.
This paper is organized as follow. Section 2 introduces briefly the concepts of economic growth and the key concepts in measuring economic development, section 3 explains how rule of law effect economic development in the Netherlands and Germany, section 4 presents the relationship between income distribution and economic development, section 5 describes cultural influence on economic development, section 6 consists of examples of successful entrepreneurship in the Netherlands and Germany, section 6 deals with the technology factor in economy in the two