It has become received wisdom in Brussels and Washington that there is a new “euro-sclerosis”: that the EU economy is lagging the US

This view is wrong

A little primer on the measurement of productivity – and why reports of the economic death of Europe are greatly exaggerated🧵

Adjusted for the difference in price level, GDP per capita has grown 70% in the US since 1990 vs. 63% in the EU27

This corresponds to an annual growth rate of 1.6% in the US vs. 1.5% in the EU.

The US has been doing better post-Covid, but over the medium run no big divergence

Core EU has 290 million inhabitants: it's a bit smaller than the US (340m) but not much so

The key fact is that productivity in this core EU is essentially the same as in the US:

€60 per hour (corrected for price differences) using the most recent WID.world data

prod.wid.world/www-site/upl...