The paper analyzes why Germany experiences the high and sticky unemployment. It looks at wage policy and proposes a new approach to measure productivity growth when unemployment increases. It studies the position of trade unions and the institutional set-up of the labor market. It looks at the...

This paper discusses the goal conflict between social protection and economic growth as well as employment. Taking the German economy as an example for the large continental economies of Old Europe, it analyzes twenty mechanisms that affect the fundamentals of the economy negatively and imply...