The pi-electronic transitions of 2-aryl- and 2-amino-3-arylazopropenoi
c acid esters were interpreted in terms of localisation on molecular f
ragments and charge transfer between them. The localisation is charact
erised by atomic and the respective fragmental localisation numbers L(
A) obtained by a transition density matrix formalism within a standard
PPP calculation. A band analysis of the UV spectra based on a normal
logarithmic distribution function is presented.