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 book analyzes Germany's economic performance at the turn of the twenty-first century. The period under observation strecthes from Germany's unification in 1990 over the death of the German Mark to first experiences with the Euro, with East Germany providing a hot topic of debate.

This paper assesses the contribution of the European Central Bank (ECB) to Germany's ongoing economic crisis, a vicious circle of decline in which the country has become stuck since the early 1990s. It is argued that the ECB continues the Bundesbank tradition of asymmetric policymaking: the bank...