GDP & Tech
Is Europe really sliding into a middle-tier economy? A widely-shared gap between the US and EU27 deserves some unpacking — once you adjust for exchange rates and price levels, the picture changes.
1 · The gap
The gap
Is Europe falling behind, or is the dollar just strong? The headline GDP divergence, how the measurement changes the story — and what actually reaches the median household.
1.1 · The GDP gap
Since 2008, an $11 trillion nominal GDP gap emerged
Gross domestic product, current prices (US$), nominal. The EU27 went from roughly level with the US to trillions behind — but in nominal dollar terms.
1.2 · Three lenses
Comparing EU27 and US economies: nominal, FX-adjusted, and PPP
The same two economies look very different depending on how you measure them. Currency swings and price levels drive most of the headline gap.
01Nominal GDP, current US$
The EU27 line is converted to US$ at a fluctuating exchange rate. Useful for comparing position on the global stage.
02Nominal GDP, constant '08 FX
Using a fixed 2008 exchange rate removes distortions from currency moves, but not price-level differences between countries.
03PPP-adjusted GDP
PPP accounts for cost-of-living differences and is useful for comparing real purchasing power. Healthcare is a big item, for instance.
These three charts aren't three opinions — they're three questions. The nominal chart asks how big Europe is on the global stage, converting EU output to dollars at the market rate. That's why much of the headline gap is really a currency story: the euro was strong in 2008 and has weakened against the dollar since, and dollar GDP swings with the exchange rate rather than the real economy.
The constant-FX chart freezes the rate to remove the swing. But why did the dollar strengthen? Not by accident. Capital has gravitated to the US because that's where the best investment opportunities are — and deeper capital markets. A strong dollar is, in part, the price of the rest of the world wanting to own US assets. The dollar is strong because America is the more dynamic economy, so it's not just an artifact. That said, changes in FX rates (a sentiment machine, voting on a country's long-term outlook) affect economic performance from one year to the next in ways that don't represent what happened fundamentally in that period. So it's still helpful to also look at the FX-adjusted view.
The PPP chart goes further, re-pricing both economies against a common basket to ask what incomes actually buy — and on that measure the gap has been broadly flat, even narrowing, for 25 years. Haters call it cope. As Emma Duncan stingingly wrote, PPP “accounts for the fact that things are cheaper in poorer countries.” But the PPP data shows that American living standards are not pulling away — it does confirm they are significantly higher than in Europe, however.
The reason we show constant-FX in the middle is to make the case that the FX-rate change is doing most of the work here. So we can conclude that on living standards, Europe hasn't been falling behind that much — even regaining ground.
Source: Dealroom.co analysis based on World Bank Open Data (GDP current US$, GDP PPP, and the Euro-area official exchange rate). EU27 is the World Bank "European Union" aggregate. The constant-'08-FX series re-prices EU27 output at the fixed 2008 EUR/USD rate, isolating real growth from the euro's depreciation. PPP figures use a common basket of goods to compare price levels across economies.
1.3 · Standard of living
Median household income — are Europeans poorer?
Source: Dealroom.co analysis based on the OECD Income Distribution Database (median equivalised disposable household income, INC_DISP/MEDIAN, national currency), converted to US$ either at OECD Actual Individual Consumption PPP (PPP_P41, the standard welfare comparator) or at World Bank market exchange rates (PA.NUS.FCRF), with IMF CPI (PCPIPCH) as the real-growth deflator. PPP equalises price levels (the like-for-like comparison); market FX swings with the currency and makes lower-price economies look poorer. The level views start in 2013 (the first year the US median is published); the 2022–23 swings reflect PPP / relative-price moves (notably the 2022 US inflation spike) and provisional figures, so treat the latest two years as preliminary. France's OECD median begins in 2020, so it appears on the level views only (real growth needs the 2013 base). These standardised OECD medians don't reproduce every figure cited in the debate below — different sources use different income concepts and years — but they are the like-for-like comparison. Toggle the switches and pills to rebuild the chart.
2 · What's underneath
What's underneath
Start with the variable the whole debate turns on: productivity — and the market value it compounds into. Then how concentrated the prosperity really is, place by place.
2.1 · Productivity
Productivity — GDP per hour worked
Krugman / EU KLEMS · 2000-2019
How much of the US productivity lead is “tech”?
Krugman's EU KLEMS read says the US lead is real in the growth accounts, but heavily concentrated in ICT rather than broad-based across the whole economy.
Sources: Dealroom.co visualisation of Paul Krugman's “European vs. U.S. Economic Performance: An Update” (Substack, 2026), based on EU KLEMS sector productivity data. Krugman's chart stops at 2019 to avoid COVID-era distortions and because newer comparable sectoral data were not available in that cut. The same EU KLEMS productivity-data family underlies the ICT-sector decomposition cited in Mario Draghi's “The future of European competitiveness” report.
The live chart above uses the OECD Productivity database (GDPHRS, GDP per hour worked; USD_PPP_H for PPP and XDC_H national currency for market FX; constant prices = real, current prices = nominal) and World Bank exchange rates (PA.NUS.FCRF; the pre-1999 euro is a synthetic rate from the Deutsche Mark). Toggle the pills and switches to rebuild the comparison.
2.2 · The value creation gap
The value creation gap: US public markets have pulled away
Combined market cap in $ trillions. The S&P 500 split shows the Mag 7 and the rest of the index; STOXX Europe 600 is shown on the same basis.
Source: Dealroom.co analysis based on Yahoo Finance data. Performance is the total price return of each index's combined market cap over the selected window.
2.3 · Within-country disparity
Within countries, metro productivity gaps are large
National productivity averages can hide how much output is concentrated in a small number of metropolitan economies.
Source: OECD Functional Urban Areas economy data, via the Dealroom metro productivity spreadsheet. Horizontal position is GDP per worker (PPP US$); bubble size is metro employment. Data uses the latest OECD year available per metro: in the default rows, UK is 2021, France and Ireland are 2023, and Germany, Italy and the US are 2022. Other dropdown rows use latest available 2021-2023 values. Chart format inspired by Ed Conway on Sky News.
2.4 · US states vs Europe
US states are pulling away from Europe
Source: Dealroom.co analysis. US states from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (real GDP, chained 2017 dollars, and population); countries from the IMF World Economic Outlook (GDP per capita at PPP, real GDP growth, population). Horizontal axis: cumulative real GDP-per-capita growth 2008–2023. Vertical axis: 2023 GDP per capita in constant-2017 PPP US dollars (countries: 2017 PPP level carried forward by real per-capita growth). Ireland & Luxembourg (multinational profit-shifting / tiny-base distortions), Singapore & Hong Kong (city-states) and Washington DC are excluded as outliers.
3 · Government levers
Government levers
The levers governments can pull on everything above: how much the state spends and borrows, the demographic base it works with, the talent it attracts — and whether Europe can keep paying for the model it wants to defend.
3.1 · Government spending
The rise of government — spending as % of GDP
Source: Dealroom.co analysis based on the IMF "Government expenditure, % of GDP" series (Public Finances in Modern History & World Economic Outlook). EU27 and the Euro area are GDP-weighted averages of member states (IMF NGDPD weights). Coverage varies by country and extends back to the early 20th century for several. Toggle the pills to rebuild the comparison.
3.2 · GDP & debt
Nominal GDP and government debt, current rates
GDP (solid) versus general-government gross debt (dashed) in current US$. The shaded area is the gap between output and debt — for several large economies, debt has caught up with, or overtaken, annual GDP.
Source: Dealroom.co analysis based on the IMF World Economic Outlook
(NGDPD, GDP in current US$; GGXWDG_NGDP, general-government gross debt as % of GDP). Debt in US$ is derived as GDP × debt-to-GDP ÷ 100.
EU27 and Euro-area figures are the IMF's official aggregates. Toggle the region pills to rebuild the comparison.
3.3 · Population
Population trend since 2008 — total and working age
Indexed to 2008 = 100. Total population (solid) versus the working-age cohort, ages 15–64 (dashed). Europe's working-age population has been shrinking even as its headcount holds roughly flat.
Source: Dealroom.co analysis based on World Bank Open Data
(SP.POP.TOTL, total population; SP.POP.1564.TO, population ages 15–64). Each series is indexed to its 2008 level (=100); end-of-line labels show the average annual growth rate over the period.
3.4 · Skilled migration
The race for talent — who attracts the world's skilled migrants?
Frontier industries go where the people are. The pipeline isn't the problem: Europe produces 24% of the world's unicorn founders — second only to the US at 38%. But nearly half of European unicorn founders have started in the US.
01Degree-holders among recent arrivals
Share of recent migrants holding a university degree. Europe's intake has upskilled fast — from 25% a decade earlier (tick mark) to 39% — but it still recruits below the rich-world average, while roughly half of America's newcomers arrive with a degree.
02Flagship skilled-worker visas, 2024
New admissions under each bloc's flagship high-skill scheme. The H-1B approved 1.8× as many new skilled workers as the EU Blue Card — before counting renewals — and nearly three-quarters of all Blue Cards were issued by a single member state.
Source: Dealroom.co compilation. Education mix of recent arrivals: OECD / European Commission, Indicators of Immigrant Integration 2023 (Settling In) — tertiary-educated share of migrants arrived within the previous five years (EU 39%, OECD 50% in 2020; EU 25%, OECD 35% a decade earlier) — and Migration Policy Institute analysis of US Census ACS data (48% of immigrants arriving 2018–22 hold a college degree). Visas: USCIS H-1B annual reports and Pew Research (FY 2024: 141,207 initial-employment approvals, 258,196 renewals); Eurostat (EU Blue Cards: 78,096 in 2024, 89,055 in 2023; Germany 56,252 in 2024). The two schemes aren't perfectly like-for-like — the H-1B is a capped, renewable temporary visa, and the Blue Card sits alongside national skilled routes — but each is its bloc's flagship. India is the top origin country on both (71% of FY 2024 H-1B approvals; 21% of 2024 Blue Cards). Migration corridors map: committed snapshot of the Dealroom Founder DNA mobility data across the unicorn / thoroughbred / colt cohort — founder lens counts a founder's researched country of origin vs their company's current HQ (2,708 cross-border moves); company lens counts companies whose verified founding country differs from their current HQ (512 of 9,658). Unicorn-founder origins: Dealroom, Europe's talent gap (Europe-born founders are 24% of the world's unicorn founders vs 38% US-born; European-founded unicorns hold ~6% of global unicorn enterprise value). Static curated figures; sources revise annually.
3.6 · Can Europe afford it?
Can Europe afford its model?
The competitiveness question, in one frame: Europe is a small share of the world's people and output, yet an outsized share of its welfare spending and a small share of its defence. The historian Stephen Kotkin's shorthand captures it.
“Europe has about 7% of the world's population, roughly 17–19% of global GDP, and nearly 50% of global social spending.”
Europe represents a shrinking share of global GDP but still aspires to maintain a distinctive social model, environmental leadership, and strategic independence. Draghi's warning is that these goals are not free. Without greater competitiveness, Europe may no longer have the economic strength required to sustain the values it wants to defend.
Approximate, widely-cited orders of magnitude (exact figures vary by source, year and how “Europe” is defined — here roughly the EU/EEA). Framing per Stephen Kotkin. Population & GDP shares: UN / IMF; military-spending shares: SIPRI; the social-spending share reflects Europe's outsized welfare states relative to the rest of the world.
A · Appendix
Appendix
The supporting material: evidence on social mobility, the mean-vs-median income question, the debate these charts sparked, and how the page is built.
A.1 · Upward mobility
Upward mobility — where can a poor child actually rise?
The probability that a child born to parents in the bottom 20% of the income distribution reaches the top 20% as an adult — measured reality versus what each country's citizens believe.
Source: Alesina, Stantcheva & Teso, “Intergenerational Mobility and Preferences for Redistribution”, American Economic Review 108(2), 2018. Actual transition probabilities: US from the universe of taxpayers born 1980–85 (Chetty et al.); UK, France, Italy and Sweden from the national cohort studies documented in the paper. Perceived probabilities: the paper's surveys of ~10,000 respondents across the five countries (2016). Two caveats, plainly: (1) this is rank mobility — moving between fifths of your own country's income ladder — so it says nothing about how big the jump is in money, and Europe's rungs sit closer together; (2) the US figure is built from millions of tax records while the European ones come from far smaller surveys (roughly 1,300–2,800 people), which tends to flatter the European numbers a little. Cleaner like-for-like studies (US vs Denmark, US vs Canada, from administrative data) still find the same direction of gap. Static figures — intergenerational mobility is measured over decades and has no live API; resurfaced in the 2026 debate on European living standards.
A.2 · Mean vs median
Mean vs median: how much of the US lead is its top tail?
A standard pushback on GDP-per-capita comparisons: America's average is pulled up by its richest, so the typical American may not be as far ahead as the headline number suggests. The test: express each country three ways against the same-year US figure — GDP per person, then the mean, then the median equivalised disposable household income, all PPP-adjusted.
On levels, the hypothesis is largely right. Switching from GDP per person to the median household closes a real chunk of the gap everywhere on the continent: Spain jumps from 63% of the US to 81%, France from 75% to 86%, Germany from 86% to 92%, and the Dutch median lands within three points of parity. The mechanism is the shape of the US distribution — the American mean sits 25% above the American median, the widest wedge in this set, so averages flatter the top tail. The exception proves the rule: the UK is almost exactly as unequal (1.24×), and gains nothing at the median.
On growth, the FT's point survives the check. The claim usually attributed to the FT's John Burn-Murdoch — that even median income is now rising faster in the US than in Europe — holds in the OECD data: real median income grew +25% in the US over 2013–23, ahead of Germany (+12%), the Netherlands (+11%), Sweden (+9%), the UK and Italy (+7%), with only Spain (+25%) keeping pace and France flat since its series began in 2020. Notably, the US median also grew slightly faster than the US mean over the window — the typical American household kept up with the average one. Burn-Murdoch's 2022 essay argued the US looks like “a poor society with some very rich people” at the bottom decile; Noah Smith's rebuttal — that the US median is near the top of the world — is what this data shows, and the growth series settles the direction of travel. The standard-of-living chart above has the full year-by-year median series with a PPP/market-FX toggle.
The honest summary: measured at the typical household, Europe is up to 18 points closer to the US than GDP per capita implies — but behind everywhere, and the gap is compounding, not closing.
Source: Dealroom.co analysis of the OECD Income Distribution Database (mean and median equivalised disposable household income, current prices, 2012 methodology; latest complete year 2023) converted at OECD Actual-Individual-Consumption PPPs (PPP_P41); GDP per capita from IMF WEO (PPPPC, international $). Real growth deflates each country's own series by its CPI (IMF PCPIPCH), 2013→2023 — France's IDD series begins in 2020, so its growth bar covers 2020→23 only. “Equivalised” adjusts income for household size. Mean ÷ median is a compact inequality measure: US 1.25, UK 1.24, vs 1.11–1.19 on the continent. Context: John Burn-Murdoch, “The US is a poor society with some very rich people” (FT, Sep 2022 — the bottom-decile lens); Noah Smith's rebuttal on medians; Matthew Klein, “Yes, living standards have grown slower in Northwest Europe”. Rebuild: scripts/build-mean-median-income.mjs (committed snapshot data/mean-median-income.json).
A.3 · The debate board
Pick a question — three economists answer
The data above isn't really in dispute — what it means is. In 2026 a sharp public argument broke out over exactly these charts: Krugman, the Garicanos and Noah Smith read the same numbers and land in three different places. Choose a flashpoint: each gives their take, with the numbers they lean on inside the bubble — and Dealroom's own cross-check below where we have one.
Is Europe really falling behind?
Three verdicts from the same dataset — where each economist ultimately lands.
The “productivity gap” mostly measures the volume of a tech sector the US happens to host — not how people actually live.
At PPP, Europe has held ~90% of US output per hour for 25 years, and tech's gains diffuse worldwide as cheaper products. Europe : US :: Texas : California. The real risk is geopolitical, not GDP.
Paul KrugmanNobel laureate · Substack
Tech genuinely makes America richer — and the gap is widening.
It bids up local wages, earns fat margins (Apple ~40%, Anthropic ~70%) that stay as US profit, and concentrates in self-reinforcing clusters that push Europe out of the next frontier. The median American is materially ahead.
Luis Garicanowith Pieter Garicano · Silicon Continent
America is clearly richer.
Europe roughly kept pace on living standards but stagnated on productivity — itself a failure, since rich economies should converge. And the benchmark that matters isn't the US. It's China.
Noah SmithNoahpinion
How do you even measure “falling behind”?
Has Europe's standard of living actually slipped against America since 2000 — or only its “real GDP” on one particular accounting convention?
To compare living standards at a point in time, use PPP at current prices — and Europe has barely moved.
Euro-area output per hour was ~90% of the US level in 2001 and ~90% in 2024; France was 74% of US GDP per capita in 2001 and 73% in 2024. The constant-price “divergence” is real arithmetic, but it measures the rising volume of tech output, not welfare.
Paul KrugmanNobel laureate · Substack
For growth over time, constant prices are the right tool — and they show America genuinely pulling away.
Current-price comparisons go blind precisely where productivity surges and prices fall (software). Choosing the PPP snapshot that shows “no gap” is choosing the metric that cannot see the gap.
Luis Garicanowith Pieter Garicano · Silicon Continent
Doesn't argue the yardstick — his rebuttal's title says where he lands: “Yes, Europeans are poorer than Americans.”
Noah SmithNoahpinion
Dealroom fact-check: this is exactly the toggle on the Productivity chart (2.1) above — Real (constant prices) shows the gap widening; the PPP snapshot Krugman prefers shows it roughly flat.
Is it “just tech” — and do the gains spill over to everyone?
US growth is concentrated in a tiny IT sector. Does that lead diffuse to Europe through cheaper technology — or does America keep most of the winnings?
IT is the engine, but competition passes its gains to consumers everywhere as lower prices.
IT is only ~8% of US value added yet nearly half of US productivity growth. Europeans buy the same iPhones at the same world prices, so the US lead shows up as faster measured growth, not a real divergence in living standards. California's tech-driven boom dwarfs Texas's — yet no one says Texans are left behind.
Paul KrugmanNobel laureate · Substack
Three holes in the diffusion story — each makes America genuinely richer.
Non-tradables: housing, healthcare, services are priced in local labour markets; US tech bids those wages up, Europe gets no such lift. Margins: tech isn't sold at marginal cost (Apple ~40%, Anthropic ~70%), so gains stay as profit and equity, mostly US-owned. Agglomeration: clusters self-reinforce, pushing Europe out of the next frontier too.
Luis Garicanowith Pieter Garicano · Silicon Continent
Sits out the plumbing argument — for him the productivity stagnation itself is the failure, wherever the gains flow.
Noah SmithNoahpinion
Does US inequality mean the typical American isn't ahead?
America's average is inflated by the rich. Strip that out — is the median American household actually better off than the median European one?
High US inequality “arithmetically” pulls down what GDP/capita implies for most Americans — an important correction.
But he declines to put a number on it, “simply asserting” the effect is important but unquantified.
Paul KrugmanNobel laureate · Substack
On median disposable income — after taxes and transfers, size- and PPP-adjusted — Americans are clearly ahead.
The US also redistributes more than the cliché suggests, off a higher base; and the fastest divergence is recent, so 2021 figures understate the gap if anything.
Luis Garicanowith Pieter Garicano · Silicon Continent
America is clearly richer — his essay's title is the answer: “Yes, Europeans are poorer than Americans.”
Europe roughly kept pace on living standards — but the typical American still comes out ahead.
Noah SmithNoahpinion
Dealroom fact-check: our standardised comparison — the median-income chart (1.3) above (OECD median equivalised income at consumption-PPP) — puts the US lead smaller: roughly +18% over the Netherlands and +30% over France in 2021, versus the +30%/+52% the Garicanos cite. The gap between the two numbers is Krugman's point: how far ahead the median American looks depends heavily on the method.
Is the gap just Europeans choosing leisure?
Americans work more. Adjust for hours and the gap nearly vanishes — so isn't lower European GDP a lifestyle choice, not a decline?
Productivity per hour is close; most of the GDP/capita gap is simply hours worked.
German output per hour is ~97% of the US level — the productivity gap explains only about a fifth of Germany's GDP gap. Europeans take their gains as August and shorter weeks. A different choice, not poverty.
Paul KrugmanNobel laureate · Substack
For hours to explain the divergence since 2000, Americans would have to work more relative to Europeans now than then. The opposite happened.
A 2026 NBER paper finds about half the 1990s hours gap has reversed — Americans work fewer hours per person than in 2000, Europeans more — so post-2000 US growth can't be a “more hours” story.
Luis Garicanowith Pieter Garicano · Silicon Continent
No quarrel over hours — his point is the destination: Europe stagnated on productivity, and rich economies should converge.
Noah SmithNoahpinion
France plainly doesn't look as poor as Mississippi
Walk around Paris and Alabama: surely the gut check tells you the GDP numbers are missing something?
Europe isn't poor the way Alabama is poor.
France's life expectancy is 4.7 years above the US (9 above Alabama); literacy is higher; tech access is comparable. Alabama is poor from low productivity; Europe is “poorer” mostly from fewer hours by choice.
Paul KrugmanNobel laureate · Substack
Tourists self-select into Europe's prettiest old cores; American wealth hides in the suburbs.
Drive the edge of any US city — huge new homes, downtown towers in Austin and Nashville. And it's generational: housing often costs more in Europe, and the nice cores are out of reach for the young. “Europe is great for people with American incomes.”
Luis Garicanowith Pieter Garicano · Silicon Continent
Doesn't do the walking tour — but grants that Europe “roughly kept pace on living standards” while productivity stalled.
Noah SmithNoahpinion
So what should Europe worry about?
Here the three converge more than they admit — they just disagree about which threat is largest.
The real danger is being cut off from strategically vital technology while the US turns unreliable and China rises.
Europe is one of three economic superpowers, and the only democratic one. Its problem is political timidity, not poverty.
Paul KrugmanNobel laureate · Substack
The divergence is the single strongest argument for reform.
Explain it away and you hand the opponents of change their alibi — that Europe is already at the frontier. “Something America is doing is working,” and Europe needs to find out what.
Luis Garicanowith Pieter Garicano · Silicon Continent
The benchmark that matters isn't America. It's China.
Europe stagnated on productivity — itself a failure, since rich economies should converge. “Europe can no longer afford to be the shabby, comfortable aristocrat of the world economy.”
Noah SmithNoahpinion
Sources: Paul Krugman, “Is Europe in Economic Decline?”, “Challenging the Narrative of European Decline, Continued”, “Modeling the US–Europe Paradox” and “European vs. U.S. Economic Performance: An Update” (Substack, 2026); Pieter & Luis Garicano, “European stagnation is real” (Silicon Continent, 2026); Noah Smith, “Yes, Europeans are poorer than Americans” (Noahpinion, 2026). Supporting: Mario Draghi, “The future of European competitiveness” (European Commission, 2024); ECB on euro-area vs US labour productivity (2024); Birinci, Karabarbounis & See, “Why Do Americans No Longer Work So Much More?” (NBER, 2026). Each take on the debate board is attributed to the participant who made it — these are the debaters' positions, not Dealroom analysis; where a claim can be checked against the live charts above, the Dealroom fact-check is noted in place. Photos: Paul Krugman — The White House, public domain; Luis Garicano — European Parliament, CC BY 2.0; Stephen Kotkin — Taylordw, CC BY-SA 4.0; all via Wikimedia Commons. Noah Smith — profile photo via Noahpinion.
A.4 · How this is built
How this is built
- The mean-vs-median appendix reads a committed snapshot:
scripts/build-mean-median-income.mjspulls OECD IDD mean & median equivalised disposable income, converts at AIC PPPs, and deflates growth by each country's own CPI — values are baked into the page and saved todata/mean-median-income.json. - Every live chart is pulled from a public API (no manual updates — each refreshes as the source revises): GDP gap via
/api/worldbank-gdp, median income via/api/oecd-disposable-income, productivity via/api/oecd-productivity, value creation gap via/api/value-creation-gap, GDP vs debt via/api/imf-gdp-debt, population via/api/worldbank-population, share of world GDP via/api/worldbank-gdp-share. - Skilled migration and upward mobility are static, hand-sourced figures (no live API exists for either): recent-arrival education mix from OECD/EC Settling In 2023 and MPI's ACS analysis; visa counts from USCIS annual H-1B reports and Eurostat Blue Card statistics; mobility from Alesina–Stantcheva–Teso (AER 2018). Each cites its sources in place.
- Nominal & PPP GDP:
NY.GDP.MKTP.CDandNY.GDP.MKTP.PP.CD; Euro-area FX:PA.NUS.FCRF. - Value creation gap: published Google Sheet "Indices", Main tab — S&P 500, S&P 500 excluding Mag 7, Mag 7, and STOXX Europe 600 combined market-cap series.
- Constant-'08-FX EU27 = nominal US$ × fx(year) ÷ fx(2008) — the same real series, held at one exchange rate.
- GDP vs debt: IMF WEO
NGDPDandGGXWDG_NGDP; debt US$ = GDP × debt-to-GDP ÷ 100. Population: World BankSP.POP.TOTLandSP.POP.1564.TO, indexed to 2008 = 100. - Productivity: OECD Productivity database
GDPHRS(GDP per hour worked) inUSD_PPP_H— constant prices (chain-linked volume,TRANSFORMATION=Nlevels), US$ at PPP — the real-volume series, so trends reflect productivity growth rather than inflation or PPP revaluation. - Krugman / EU KLEMS decomposition: static 2000-2019 sectoral-productivity read from Krugman's Substack analysis of EU KLEMS data; it stops at 2019 because the compatible KLEMS sector cut avoids COVID distortions and has no newer comparable years in that analysis.
Where does the growth actually come from?
The full Dealroom platform tracks the companies, investment and innovation behind the numbers — across every European ecosystem.