Stagnation policy in the Eurozone and post-Keynesian economic policy alternatives

Empirically, the macroeconomic institutions and the macroeconomic policy approach in the Eurozone have failed badly, both in terms of preventing the global financial and economic crisis from becoming a euro crisis and in generating a rapid recovery from the crisis, in particular. In this contribution will argue that the dominating macroeconomic policy regime in the Eurozone can be seen as a version of what Steindl called ‘stagnation policy’. We examine the macroeconomic institutions and the macroeconomic policy approach of the Eurozone which has been based on the New Consensus Macroeconomics, and we highlight its main deficiencies leading to stagnation policy. This will then provide the grounds for an outline of an alternative macroeconomic policy approach for the specific institutional setup of the Eurozone based on a post-Keynesian approach.