Germany’s recent export successes and the fast recovery from the 2007 -2009 crisis made it Europe’s “economic superstar” in public opinion. This paper interprets the German performance against the background of financialisation. After an examination of the pre-crisis demand and growth...

In a simplified model GDP growth depends on the demand effect of private investment growth and on the growth of the private savings ratio. In a generalized model private investment (IP) has to be supplemented by the trade balance (E) and the budget deficit (D), their sum being termed NPCE...

In this paper we test the well-known hypothesis of Obstfeld and Rogoff (2000) that trade costs are the key to explaining the so-called Feldstein-Horioka puzzle. Using a gravity framework in an intertemporal context, we provide strong support for the hypothesis and we reconcile our results with...

This paper analyses the trade balance effects of Europe agreements (EA) between the EU-15 and four new EU members from Central and Eastern Europe (CEEC-4) using both static and dynamic panel data approaches. Specifically, the system Generalized Method of Moments (GMM, Blundell and Bond, 1998)...