Secular Stagnation?

Richard N. COOPER Harvard University. Contact : rcooper@fas.harvard.edu.

According to some economists, the economy is presently entering a secular stagnation era, i.e. a long period of slow or no economic growth. This situation could be explained either by a declining growth capacity due to low population and innovation growths, either to a weak aggregate demand because of savings exceeding investment. If we are actually entering such a period, several policy tools can be used to reverse the trend, namely fighting inequalities, investing massively to fulfill the huge global infrastructure needs and investing in the new energies sector to fight the on-going global warming.