Hamish McRae
Most European countries are still losing ground to the US in economic terms and most of those that are closing the gap are doing so very slowly.
That is the somewhat dispiriting conclusion of the latest report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Going for Growth, which looks at comparative international performance within the developed world and what might be done to lift the laggards.
| Italy, France and Germany are not only poorer [than the U.S.] but becoming even more poor in relative terms. |
The benchmark is the US because it remains almost the richest country in the world in terms of gross domestic product (GDP) per head and has almost the highest productivity per head. Only Luxembourg, which is tiny and has a special position within the EU, and Norway, which has oil, have higher GDP per head.
As for productivity, those two plus the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Ireland, are the only ones that have higher productivity per hour worked. Among those, Belgium and France have high unemployment (thereby excluding their less productive workers from the statistics), the Netherlands has high concealed unemployment and Ireland has benefited from massive high- productivity inward investment.
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