One frequently voiced proposal these days is that Germany should step up its investment as a lever for increasing its own growth potential as well as that of the euro area as a whole. Indeed, the total real investment ratio in Germany was markedly lower in the 2000s than in the 1990s.
And it was also lower than in the rest of the euro area. Nevertheless, weaker investment in the last decade was largely the result of the construction boom in the late 1990s which followed German reunification. If construction is excluded from the investment ratio, Germany’s situation is no longer any different from the rest of the euro area.