The joint Intereconomics/CEPS conference focused on income convergence among EU countries and within specific countries like Germany and Italy. I would like to first caution about overinterpreting these results and then look at other divergences within the Eurozone, which I regard as much more...

Whereas in 1970 most of the large EC countries were still recording real growth rates in excess of 5%, after the two oil crises there was an appreciable slowdown in economic expansion and at the beginning of the eighties even a real contraction. At the same time unemployment increased...