ABSTRACT
It is not my purpose in this short chapter to prescribe a macroeconomic policy for Germany. That is better left to those who know the German background far better than I do. All I want to do, as an outside observer, is to call attention to the extremely and unnecessarily narrow focus of the current discussion of macro-policy in expert circles in Germany. It is not too much to say, in my view, that there is almost no proper discussion of specifically macroeconomic problems and remedies. Instead, there is always talk of labor-market reform and, only very recently, occasionally product-market reform. These are no doubt important issues, and reforms are surely desirable. But stopping with them is exactly what I mean by a narrow focus and an evasion of macroeconomic factors. I think that this limitation is symptomatic of a misunderstanding of both the German situation and macroeconomic theory.
