Bloomberg cited a recent paper that appeared in the Journal of Economic Perspectives in an article about how Germany has transformed itself into one of the world’s strongest economies. The 2014 paper by Christian Dustmann, Bernd Fitzenberger, Uta Schönberg, and Alexandra Spitz-Oener examines how Germany, once called “the sick man of Europe” in the late 1990s and early 2000s, emerged over the past decade as an “economic superstar” that experienced almost no increase in unemployment during the Great Recession and boosted its exports to record levels in 2011. The authors attribute Germany’s strength to its wage competitiveness and ability remain flexible in its labor agreements with manufacturers and other sectors at times of “extraordinary economic circumstances.”