This volume challenges the view that unemployment is exclusively determined by structural characteristics of the labour market and the social benefit system. Macroeconomic policies and investment in capital stock are included in the analysis and are shown to have a major role to play.

The German debt brake is often regarded as a great success story, and has therefore served as a role model for the Euro area and its fiscal compact. In this paper we fundamentally criticize the debt brake. We show that (1) it suffers from serious shortcomings, and its success is far from certain...

The Broad Economic Policy Guidelines contain the answers of the European Commission and the governments of the EU-member countries to the European growth and employment problems. These guidelines have been the major EU-economic policy concept for around ten years now. They can be seen as a...

The paper fundamentally challenges the institutional sclerosis explanation of the present German economic stagnation. Instead we present a macroeconomic explanation focusing on the combined effects of too restrictive monetary policies, too restrictive and sometimes pro-cyclical fiscal policies...

This paper traces the euro zone?s inadequate macroeconomic performance in recent years back to the predominance of a restrictive macroeconomic policy mix based on a ?new monetarist? approach to economic policy. An approach based on a (post-)Keynesian analysis is presented as a growth and...

Die Grundzüge der Wirtschaftspolitik formulieren die Antwort der EU-Regierungen und der Kommission auf die Wachstums- und Beschäftigungsschwierigkeiten in Europa. Obwohl damit seit mehr als zehn Jahren ein wirtschaftspolitisches Konzept für die Europäische Union vorliegt, haben die dort...