IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/lev/levppb/ppb_67.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Economic Consequences of German Unification: The Impact of Misguided Macroeconomic Policies?

Author

Listed:
  • Jorg Bibow

Abstract

Although the costs associated with moving an antiquated socialist economy toward its capitalist counterpart was anticipated to be significant, German industrial efficiency was expected to quickly overcome any challenges. Things turned out rather differently. Conventional wisdom blamed poor economic performance on unification. The government and the Bundesbank therefore put in place fiscal and monetary policies aimed at reducing borrowing and, in turn, containing the threat of inflation. The positive results (albeit in five years) supported this perception. The author of this brief, however, takes exception to the notion that these policies were effective in stabilizing the economy. His analysis shows that the country's poor economic performance dramatically dampened economic activity and led to an extended period of sluggish growth. Blame for anemic growth and high unemployment, he believes, should be placed squarely on the country's finance department and central bank rather than on unification.

Suggested Citation

  • Jorg Bibow, "undated". "The Economic Consequences of German Unification: The Impact of Misguided Macroeconomic Policies?," Economics Public Policy Brief Archive ppb_67, Levy Economics Institute.
    • Handle: RePEc:lev:levppb:ppb_67
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/ppb67.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. von Hagen, Jurgen, 1992. "German unification: Economic problems and consequences : A comment," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 211-221, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jorg Bibow, 2004. "Fiscal Consolidation: Contrasting Strategies & Lessons From International Experiences," Economics Working Paper Archive wp_400, Levy Economics Institute.
    2. Jorg Bibow, 2004. "Assessing the ECB's Performance since the Global Slowdown: A Structural Policy Bias Coming Home to Roost?," Economics Working Paper Archive wp_409, Levy Economics Institute.
    3. Jörg Bibow, 2004. "Für eine Kehrtwende von der Spar- zur Wachstumsorientierung: nominales BIP-Ziel als Strategie der Makrowirtschaftspolitik in der Wirtschafts- und Währungsunion," Vierteljahrshefte zur Wirtschaftsforschung / Quarterly Journal of Economic Research, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research, vol. 73(3), pages 445-459.
    4. Jorg Bibow, "undated". "Pushing Germany Off the Cliff Edge," Economics Policy Note Archive 03-4, Levy Economics Institute.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jorg Bibow, 2001. "Making EMU Work: Some lessons from the 1990s," International Review of Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(3), pages 233-259.
    2. Jorg Bibow, 2003. "On the 'burden' of German unification," BNL Quarterly Review, Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, vol. 56(225), pages 137-169.
    3. Hefeker, Carsten, 1994. "GMU, EMU, and the Bundesbank: The political economy of recent EMS-crises," Discussion Papers, Series II 221, University of Konstanz, Collaborative Research Centre (SFB) 178 "Internationalization of the Economy".
    4. Jorg Bibow, 2001. "On the 'Burden' of German Unification The Economic Consequences of Messrs. Waigel and Tietmeyer," Economics Working Paper Archive wp_328, Levy Economics Institute.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:lev:levppb:ppb_67. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Elizabeth Dunn (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.levyinstitute.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.