Stagnating Business Investment in The Netherlands and Germany: Causes and Consequences

Economic growth, especially after the financial crisis of 2008, has been declining in many OECD nations. Declining economic growth has negative effects including a lower rate of productivity growth, stagnating standards of living, increases in income inequality etc. Many economists believe that stagnating fixed business investment is one of the...

The secular stagnation of productivity growth

The concern that an economy could experience persistent stagnation, caused by a structural weakness of aggregate demand, goes back to Alvin Hansen's thesis of “secular stagnation.” Hansen's thesis has been revived in recent times, when it became clear that productivity and potential growth in the OECD countries have been declining for decades....

Restarting Greece: Secular Stagnation of Total Factor Productivity Growth and the Greek Innovation System

In 2008, the crash of the housing market bubble lead not only to the collapse of the U.S financial system, but also to a Global Financial Crisis. The Eurozone was hurt, and the impact was not uniform. The “sick periphery”, and in particular Greece, still suffer from the consequences of this crisis. After three adjustment programmes and €293...

Lost in Deflation: Why Italy’s Woes Are a Warning to the Whole Eurozone

Using macroeconomic data for 1960–2018, this article analyzes the origins of the crisis of the “post-Maastricht Treaty order of Italian capitalism.” After 1992, Italy did more than most other Eurozone members to satisfy EMU conditions in terms of self-imposed fiscal consolidation, structural reform, and real wage restraint—and the country was...

Lost in deflation: Why Italy’s woes are a warning to the whole Eurozone

Using macroeconomic data for 1960-2018, this paper analyzes the origins of the crisis of the ‘post-Maastricht Treaty order of Italian capitalism’. After 1992, Italy did more than most other Eurozone members to satisfy EMU conditions in terms of self-imposed fiscal consolidation, structural reform and real wage restraint — and the country was...

The New Normal: Demand, Secular Stagnation, and the Vanishing Middle Class

The U.S. economy is widely diagnosed with two “diseases”: a secular stagnation of potential U.S. growth and rising income and job polarization. The two diseases have a common root in the demand shortfall, originating from the “unbalanced” growth between technologically “dynamic” and “stagnant” sectors. To understand how the short-run demand...

Secular Stagnation of Total Factor Productivity: Evidence from the Italian Economy

Italy’s economic crisis – arguably – poses the greatest challenge to the future of European economic and monetary integration, not just because of the relative size of the Italian economy or because Italy has been a founding member of the European Union and its forerunner. A more important reason is the country’s pre-crisis economic stagnation...