Second, Greece is faced with the additional challenges of completing the necessary budgetary consolidation and stepping up the structural reforms required to prepare the economy for the demanding competitive environment of monetary union. Let me discuss each of them in turn. Maintaining price stability First, there is the issue of establishing conditions that will secure price stability between now and the end of 2000.
If so, then potential output could be higher than many current estimates suggest. Over the past few years, we have also seen evidence of a pickup in U.S. productivity growth, albeit from the very depressed average pace that prevailed  5  More-educated workers and older workers both have lower structural unemployment rates, at least historically; see Aaronson, Hu, Seifoddini, and Sullivan (2015).