The Federal Republic of Germany's exports in 1980 represented approximately 23% of GNP. Germany's share of total world exports, however, declined throughout the seventies. What are the factors influencing German export performance? What is the outlook for the future?

Governments tend to increase their borrowing at the same time, giving rise to a global fiscal cycle. This global fiscal cycle has a large component that is unexplained by global business cycle variables. We propose a novel explanation for the emergence of the global fiscal cycle: governments'...