Germany has experienced tremendous growth rates in the aftermath of World War II. Since the early 1970s, growth rates declined and settled down at a more or less constant rate of 2 percent per year, only to experience a renewed negative trend around the early 2000s. We investigate the evolution...

The current world economic crisis has hit Latin America very hard. Although financial conditions have deteriorated, particularly since September 2008, the financial shock has been less severe than during the two previous crises. Thanks to improvements in external balance sheets, there has been...