Germany’s Seventh Year of Stagnation Exposes a Missing Strategy
Berlin's new growth package and pension overhaul dodge the real problem: the collapse of corporate investment and innovation.
Madrid Has the Cure for Trump-Era Energy Shocks
Spain's heretical VAT cut tames inflation—a model for Europe as Trump's tariffs and Middle East shocks bite.
Germany’s Middle-Technology Trap: Industrial Policy Blindness and the Path Out
Germany's faith in free markets has left it squeezed between China and America — but a defence-spending loophole offers unexpected hope.
Germany’s Misguided War on Baby Boomers
A prominent economist's attack on an entire generation ignores economic facts and threatens social cohesion.
Europe’s Euro Ambition: A Risky Bid for “Exorbitant Privilege”
Christine Lagarde seeks a greater international role for the euro, but Europe's economic realities present a complex challenge.
Germany Ditches Debt Brake—A Fiscal Revolution Begins
Germany scraps its debt brake, unleashing a 500-billion-euro investment plan that could transform infrastructure, defence, and economic growth.
Capital-markets union: a panacea for Europe?
Financial integration is not the problem, writes Peter Bofinger. It is the still national segmentation of government bonds.
Time for supply-side policy: Thatcher versus Schumpeter
Peter Bofinger explains what lies behind the conflict within Germany’s Ampelkoalition on economic policy.
ECB: now is the time for normalisation
Europe needs massive investment, Peter Bofinger writes. Yet the ECB’s restrictive monetary stance means it is set to fall this year.
Germany: the ‘sick man’ of Europe—but ‘dumb’ as well?
The austerity package stemming from an adverse Constitutional Court ruling, Peter Bofinger writes, defies logic.
Germany’s true economic disease
Germany is indeed ‘sick’, Peter Bofinger writes—but not for the reason most commentators think.
ECB president Lagarde: has she become unstoppable?
Asserting the need for further interest rate rises, Peter Bofinger writes, is not the same as evidencing them.
The failure of Credit Suisse—not just a one-off
The bank was mismanaged but its collapse, Peter Bofinger writes, reveals a system of regulation with as many holes as a Swiss cheese.
The role of public debt in the ‘new normal’
A Schumpeterian perspective provides new insights for fiscal policy in Europe, Peter Bofinger writes.
The digital euro: a flawed concept doomed to flop
Peter Bofinger argues that on the ‘digital euro’ the European Central Bank has dug itself into a hole it would do best to vacate.
A noble award for a ‘popular misconception’
Peter Bofinger questions last week’s award of a prestigious economics prize to an orthodox school which could not anticipate the 2008 crash.
Inflation: saving households from insolvency
Peter Bofinger argues that state guarantees of loans to households could cushion the price shock at negligible cost.