Tag Archives: Productivity

Irland in der Krise: Schuldenstreichung notwendig (Krugman: Hamping Europe’s Periphery)

Wie Paul Krugman in seinem Blog schreibt (HAMPing Europe’s Periphery – NYTimes.com), ist das Problem in Irland nicht gebannt. Das Land leidet an zwei massiven Problemen:

1) Nicht von Krugman explizit benannt: das Land ist — gemessen an den Lohnstückkosten — stark überbewertet. Davon wieder herunterzukommen setzt starke Lohn- und Preiszurückhaltung bzw. um in halbwegs überschaubaren Zeiträumen die Wettbewerbsfähigkeit zu korrigieren, wohl auch Deflation voraus.

2) Wie in allen Ländern nach katastrophalen Entwicklungen bekannt, ist eine Währungsumstellung — wegen der damit verbundenen Vernichtung der Schuldenbestände — oftmals eine Voraussetzung für einen Neuanfang. In Irland kann man den Euro jetzt nicht national abwerten aber die Schuldenbestände verhindern eine wirtschaftliche Erholung.

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The Boom: Comments on other blogs and papers (Olivier Blanchard and Gustav Horn)

Recent GDP estimates (Germany, France) as well as survey (PMI) results indicate, that at least for now, the "official recession" could well be over. By reading different blogs, I found the following papers interesting:

A very interesting piece by Olivier Blanchard:

In a short not for the IMF publication Finance and Development, he wrotes:

But the world is not in a run-of-the mill recession. The turnaround will not be simple. The crisis
has left deep scars, which will affect both supply and demand for many years to come.

What are these deep scars?

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Sebastian Dullien on Productivity Growth in Germany

Sebastian Dullien argues on Eurointelligence:

Not even a year ago, most economists doubted that the German upswing would last beyond the end of 2006. In fact, Germany’s leading academics at that time were still questioning whether the Germany economy would be able to grow by 2 percent in 2006, with forecasts for a significant growth deceleration for 2007 being the norm. Bert Rürup, head of the “council of wise man” advising the government in economic questions said in May 2006, he would be satisfied if growth even reached the government’s forecast of that time, 1.6 percent for 2006.

One year later, with the German economy growing at robust rates, the skeptics have moved to another arena, questioning whether the German economy will be able to sustain this pace of growth. Now it is no longer doubted whether Germany can experience a cyclical upswing, but whether the potential is large enough to allow a growth rate of two percent or more over the medium term.

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