La stagnazione secolare: fatti stilizzati e possibili cause

The growth and interest rate negative trends of advanced economies seem to indicate a macroeconomic equilibrium known in the literature as "Secular Stagnation", with worrying repercussions on welfare, on the financial balance of states and on monetary policies. Many long-term factors discussed in growth theory are called into question to account for these trends: savings decision, demography, investments, income distribution, innovation, to name a few. Some of these factors are intertwined with each other highlighting sometimes counter-intuitive mechanisms forming a complex picture. In this review, we present the main trends and afterward we summarize the main mechanisms that the literature has suggested as their possible determinants; a short survey, hopefully useful, to synthesize in a non-technical way the efforts of economic research on these very relevant issues.