Zeitschrift für Wirtschaftspolitik

Three lessons have emerged from the experience of the recent crisis for future economic policy. First, when a crisis of this severity strikes, governments and central banks must be prepared to engage quickly and decisively into countervailing measures. Second, as the world economy has been stabilizing gradually, they now need to orchestrate a careful exit from the extraordinary monetary and fiscal policy stimuli taken, in a way that does not jeopardize the fragile process of recovery. In this difficult balancing act, governments must adamantly reduce their very high structural budget deficits. And third, governments are responsible for facilitating a steep growth path for the aggregate economy, preferably by safeguarding competition and investing into physical and human infrastructure. Above all, national policies need to be consistently embedded into an international perspective.