出版社：Europäisches Institut für Internationale Wirtschaftsbeziehungen, Potsdam
摘要：The Eurozone is facing a serious cyclical decline in 2002/03. Germany has been
facing a quasi-stagnation for three consecutive years (2001-03) and declining capacity utilization. While the US
government has adopted an expansionary fiscal policy in 2002 which is supported by interest rate cuts of the FED,
policymakers in the Eurozone are hesitant on what to do. Recently, the ECB cut the interest rates by ½ percentage
point in June 2003 so that banks can obtain liquidity from the central bank at 2%. Is this all that can be done to
avoid stagnation in the Eurozone? As we will show, there is a strong case for an expansionary fiscal policy in
2003 and 2004 while waiving the stability pact – this would reflect a reaction to the terror shocks of September 11,
2001. This approach does not suggest a stop of adequate structural reforms in the field of labour market reforms
and social security policy. Germany’s unemployment figures reached a new post-unification record in May 2003
and can be expected to come close to 5 million in winter 2003/04. The fact that governments, trade unions and
employer federations have got used to an unemployment rate of about 10% for two decades is a disaster: If there
were another adverse shock one cannot rule out unemployment figures of up to 8 million (in the Weimar Republic
the German chancellor Brüning came to power at the end of March in 1930 when unemployment stood at 2.3
million, in Mai 1932 unemployment already had reached 6 million). The German economy is likely to stagnate in
2003 and there are prospects for a modest upswing in 2004. All this is bad news for Germany - and the Euro zone.
The structural German weakness undermines economic recovery in major trading partners – the Netherlands, Italy
and Switzerland being three prime victims. The eurozone economic situation is rather bleak as Germany and Italy
face structural weakness in terms of long-term growth. This structural long term growth problem should be clearly
distinguished from short term cyclical problems. In the period 1992-2001, the German economy lagged almost 1
percentage point behind the EU-11 partner countries. What are the reasons for Germany’s slow long term growth?
After the end of the Cold War, Germany (and Japan) is facing a more intensive global technological competition
in civilian world markets as the US, France and the UK no longer spend more than 50% of the national R&D ex-
penditures on the military. Moreover, Germany has a productivity problem in high technology where labour pro-
ductivity was lower than the average productivity in the 1990s. By contrast, productivity of high technology sec-
tors are higher than average in the US, the UK and France. Germany also scored poorly in the Pisa test of the
schooling system, and it is underspending – relative to GDP - on university education where it merely reaches 2/3
of the Scandinavian figures and ½ of the US figure. Moreover, it suffers from a lack of wage differentiation across
regions and a lack of entrepreneurship. In this situation, the shock of September11, 2001 was all the worse, as it
depressed – together with the steep fall of the stock market in 2001/2002 – the investment-GDP ratio. The steep
fall of EU stock markets partly reflected the dip of the dominant US stock markets, where the rally had been artifi-
cially inflated in the late 1990s by some crooky analysts of major investment banks which had recommended that
the public continue to buy certain stocks despite internal analysis that those stocks were overvalued. The aim of
these dirty tricks, uncovered recently by US authorities that penalized several banks in 2003, had been to generate
new M&A business for the investment banks. Fighting such crooky business should come on the agenda of a fu-
ture Basle III/the Bank of International Settlement. The world economy suffers now from underinvestment as an
echo effect of previous overinvestment waves. Investment-GDP ratios have strongly fallen between 2001 and
2003 in the EU, and that of Germany fell particularly strongly so that the country has come close to a mini reces-
sion in early 2003. One major problem of Germany is that its deficit-GDP ratio already exceeded the critical 3%
threshold in 2002; the European Commission has launched an excessive deficit procedure against Germany, which
has thus joined poor Portugal – and France also is facing this procedure now. The 3.6% deficit-GDP ratio of 2002
could, however, have been easily avoided if the Minister of Finance, Mr. Eichel, had not adopted a sloppy tax
reform. Hans Eichel shot himself in the foot when he adopted a corporate tax reform which inadvertently led to a
fall in the respective tax revenue item from a previous Euro 20 bill. – 1 % of GDP – to zero in 2002; and 2003
does not look much better. Only in 2004 will corporate tax revenues significantly increase. Higher unemployment
than expected is already undermining any prospect for Germany to bring the deficit below 3% in 2003, and the
situation for 2004 does not look much better. In this situation – with EU eastern enlargement in 2004 – Germany
could try to fulfil the 3% deficit-GDP limit with a contractionary fiscal policy which would, however, aggravate
the cyclical situation and would massively impair economic recovery not only in the Eurozone, but also in the new
member countries. What is the solution to the problem for Germany and EU-15, respectively? An expansionary
fiscal policy which would raise public investment and pay a premium to firms which invest more than in previous
years; plus long term growth policies. Cyclical Perspective: Countries which have low structural deficit ratios
should strongly raise public investment in order to stimulate overall expansion in the Eurozone. As regards Ger-
many, there is also the need to raise VAT which ideally should be done in two stages: 1 percentage point in 2004
and 2 points in 2005 which would stimulate anticipated consumption in 2004, higher VAT is unavoidable if in-
come tax rates are to be cut. There is a need for a higher VAT in order to reduce the deficit-GDP ratio in a reliable
way. A reform of the tax structure could go along with temporarily higher household transfers: “bonus payments”
in 03/04. Finally, labor market reforms and improved innovation policies are crucial for the large core countries
of the Eurozone. As regards Germany it would be wise to devote about 1/3 of foreign exchange reserves at the
Bundesbank – there is an excess of reserves (including gold) – to a new capital funded public pillar of social secu-
rity. Some of the suggestions made are based on a new OKUN-SCHUMPETER model.
