Recent studies warn that the U.S. economy may return to a phase of secular stagnation. In the next 20 to 50 years, U.S. economic growth will be negatively affected by lower contributions of hours worked and education. But some studies also add that productivity could decelerate sharply and that...

This paper argues that the lack of timely and decisive policy action to correct domestic and external imbalances contributed crucially to the build-up of financial excesses that led to the financial crisis and the Great Recession. We focus on 2002-07 and perform a number of counterfactual...