The decline in productivity growth in the EU is surprising, given the rapid onset of digitalization – often described as the industrial revolution of the twenty-first century. In fact, part of the perceived slowdown can be attributed to measurement issues: In Europe, as well as the United States, the technological changes being wrought by smartphones and the Internet simply are not showing up in the productivity data.
在数字化技术——常被描述为21世纪的工业革命——迅速推广的前提下，欧盟生产率增长下降的情况其实相当出人意料。事实上，增速放缓的其中一部分原因可以归结为测量方法的问题：在欧洲还有美国，智能手机和互联网所引发的科技变革根本没有体现在生产率数据上。