1991 Rudolf Hickel shared some of his thoughts in his book "Der Preis der Einheit" ("The Cost of Unity"), co-authored with Jan Priewe. Since 1997 Hickel has taken turns with Robert Kurz, Christa Luft and Harry Nick as the author of a challenging and respected column on economic policy in Neues Deutschland, which before 1989 was the mass circulation party newspaper of East Germany's ruling party, and has since carved itself a role across Germany as an important left-leaning daily newspaper. He also continues to contribute robustly and regularly in the Frankfurter Rundschau, Junge Welt and Tageszeitung. Hickel is a member of the economics advisory committee at ATTAC, an international (originally Paris-based) activist organisation opposed to abusive aspects of globalization. His sat as a member of the supervisory board at Salzgitter AG, a major steel producer, between 1984 and 2008, and also for many years at GEWOBA, a north German construction business headquartered in Bremen and specialising in residential tower blocks. In both cases he sat as a representative of the company employees. Hickel was also on the supervisory board at the vast Allianz insurance and banking conglomerate between 1998 and 2006, a period that included the conversion of the Allianz holding company into a pan-European "Societas Europaea". Approach Hickel favours a demand driven approach to economic policy and is regarded by commentators (and by himself) as a Post-Keynesian. During long years of political argument on the matter, he was a firm supporter of a state-mandated minimum wage (which was implemented in Germany, at the insistence of the SPD as a price for joining a government coalition, in 2015), asserting that Germany has an "internationally competitive economy, which can support a high level of wages because of its growing productivity". The labour market reforms launched in 2003 by Chancellor Schröder and carried through by his successor, known collectively as Agenda 2010, seriously held back the cyclical economic recovery that took place between 2005 and 2007, because they placed downward pressure on wages which in turn reduced consumption. It is, according to Hickel, wrong to hold back wages and thereby domestic demand: a competitive cycle of wage cuts would be economically very damaging to Germany. It would be preferable for the country to focus on innovation in order to survive in a competitive global economy. Furthermore, government to pursue a supply oriented economic strategy would favour a "casino capitalism" and so