Reversing the large differential in unit labor costs that has emerged in the euro’s first decade thus requires not only wage restraint and productivity-enhancing reforms in the south, but also higher wage gains in the north. A simulation shows that if German wages grew at 4% annually instead of the 1.5% of the last decade, and if annual productivity growth in Spain accelerated to 2% (it was close to 0.7% in both countries), Spain could reverse the unit-labor-cost differential that emerged with Germany since 2000 in five years, with Spanish wages growing at about 1.7% per annum.
因此，逆转使用欧元的第一个十年中所出现的单位劳动成本巨大差异不仅要求在南欧实行工资限制和生产率强化改革，还要求北欧提高工资。一项模拟测试表明，如果德国工资年增长率达到4%，而不是过去十年中的1.5%，同时西班牙生产率增长率为2%（现实中两国均为接近0.7%），那么西班牙可以在五年内逆转自2000年以来所累积的对德单位劳动力成本差，只要西班牙工资增长率控制在每年1.7%左右。