After all, over the past few years, growth in Germany has been noticeably below the average across the euro area. While GDP in the other euro area countries has risen at an average annual rate of just over 2½% since 1995, in Germany it has only increased by 1½% a year. There are, of course, a variety of possible explanations for this.
For example, Germany sustained a special type of “exogenous shock” - as the economists say - as a result of reunification. Furthermore, Germany was unable to profit from the convergence process leading up to European monetary union by which interest rates in those countries with previously stronger inflationary tendencies fell to Germany’s level.