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.

This paper challenges the institutional sclerosis view of the German crisis according to which rigid labour markets and generous welfare state institutions have driven Germany into its position as "Europe's sick man". In general, the view is not convincing, because the underlying hypotheses...

In the present paper we question the mainstream diagnosis of Germany's post-2000 stagnation as well as the prescribed remedies. We show that the "institutional sclerosis" view of Germany's stagnation is unfounded and that therefore the political measures proposed and actually taken are...