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...

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...