"After three years of near stagnation, the mood in Europe is definitely gloomy. Many doubt that the European model has a future. In this paper, I argue that things are not so bad, and there is room for optimism. Over the last thirty years, productivity growth has been much higher in Europe than...

"A standard proposition in open-economy macroeconomics is that a central-bank-engineered increase in the real interest rate makes domestic government debt more attractive and leads to a real appreciation. If, however, the increase in the real interest rate also increases the probability of...