On September 9th Mario Draghi, a former prime minister of Italy and former president of the European Central Bank, published his long-awaited report on European competitiveness. The continent’s productivity lags behind America’s, and it lacks world-beating corporate giants. Rising geopolitical tensions have made this problem more acute for European policymakers. They are right to worry. Listed American firms are, on average, bigger and more profitable than European ones. The difference is particularly striking among tech firms, which are twice as profitable and more than ten times the size in America. ■
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