about raising the retirement age to 67 – also shows how politically charged the matter is. measures to make employment more attractive to women are no less charged : the childcare supplement, splitting income taxation bis central bankers ’ speeches between couples and non - contributory inclusion in statutory health insurance and long - term care insurance cover mean that having a job is less worthwhile. on the other hand, separate political objectives are being pursued by means of these instruments, which have to be weighed against the foregoing. only policymakers can strike this balance. however, my point is to remind people that these measures make it less attractive to take on paid employment and thus can cost us macroeconomic growth. this price has to be borne in mind. whatever decision is made by policymakers and society at large, simply making family life and work life more compatible is not enough to maintain or even improve the standard of living in an ageing society. an important step towards stabilising labour force participation is the raising of the retirement age to 67, which i mentioned earlier. compared to a pension age of 65, this will mean that 2. 7 million more people will be of working age in 2030. calls to reverse this reform therefore worry me. it is a fact that we cannot do without the expertise of older members of the workforce. we therefore have to go to even greater lengths to integrate them more tightly into the economic process. the fact that employment in germany has reached a new all - time high is due not only to greater labour force participation but also to immigration. a systematic approach to attract skilled labour from abroad, whose expertise is needed here, would represent a major contribution to helping cushion the impact of an ageing society on the labour market. yet it is just as important not to surrender any of the progress that has already been achieved on the labour market. this applies, for instance, to the current debate on the wider application of minimum wages. the academic literature is quite divided on whether a minimum wage will increase unemployment, especially as the answer to that question will depend decisively on the size of the wage and the rest of the framework, such as the social safety net for unemployment or job protection. however, even if a minimum wage does not affect unemployment directly, it may still have a negative impact on employment trends there is a risk that enterprises will take on fewer new staff in periods of economic upturn. 1 that primarily affects those sections of the labour market that a minimum wage would actually be intended to help

, so - called “ original sin ” – that is, a lack of credibility created by poor macroeconomic discipline in the past – implied that external debt was overwhelmingly denominated in us dollars. 8 in the euro area, debt is denominated in euros. although this is obviously the currency of euro area countries, the single monetary policy aims at price stability across the euro area and thus cannot take account of national priorities deriving from fiscal or financial weaknesses in peripheral countries. by implication, neither in the emerging markets nor in the euro area periphery can the real value of the external debt burden be eroded by inflation or devaluation. any attempt to devalue would simply raise the domestic burden of the external debt. of course, this was precisely the point : by issuing debt in a currency which they could not control, the national authorities in the euro area “ tied their own hands ”. before the crisis, they obtained a credibility gain that would lower overall funding costs and thus reduced the probability of a crisis. but when a crisis occurs, the external value of the debt burden cannot be reduced by devaluation. differences between euro area and eme experiences while many of the experiences of the euro area periphery and the emes are similar, there are also important differences. first, in general terms, europe is more advanced both economically and institutionally than asia ( even if there are notable exceptions, such as singapore, hong kong and korea ). 9 advanced economies have higher “ debt tolerance, ” because of their stronger institutions, a more favourable composition of debt and a more stable fiscal revenue base ( less dependent on a small set of goods, such as commodities ). see : dornbusch, r., i. goldfajn and r. o. valdes ( 1995 ). “ currency crises and collapses, ” brookings papers on economic activity 2, pp. 219 – 293. see : eichengreen, b., r. hausmann and u. panizza ( 2005 ). “ the pain of original sin ”, in b. eichengreen and r. hausmann ( eds. ) other people ’ s money, chicago university press, pp. 87 – 102. one measure of institutional quality is reported in the world economic forum ’ s annual global competitiveness report. bis central bankers ’ speeches thus while the dynamics of financial crises may be similar, the level of debt at which they occur may be different. of course, this can