Welcome to the CR podcast Unpacking Europe.

I am Sano Tudwar, chief economist at the CR, and today I'm joined by Zach Myers, who is

Director of Research at the center on regulation in Europe

and associate fellow with us here at CR.

We're going to talk about tech and tech regulation, which is a central part of Europe's debate

about its economic future and its concerns about growth, very much inspired also by the

reports, the blueprints on how to resuscitate the

European economy by former Italian Prime Minister's Mario Draghi and Enrico Letta.

Welcome to the show, Zach.

Always good to see you, Sanda.

So, you know, you follow this debate very closely. I think it is very clear from the data that the main driver, certainly one of the main

drivers of Europe's productivity gap with the United States, and arguably China, is driven

by the fact that it's technology sector, software, AI, basically everything that's outside

manufacturing, but more on the software side of it is an underdeveloped

space and Europe's tech sector is just you know a lot smaller than the US and given that that's

where most of the productivity gains are and have been for over a decade Europe's lagging behind

and we don't see a similar pattern in other sectors where Europe's productivity

is still broadly comparable to that of the US. And there's a kind of trope on this where I'm

curious to get your view, which is that the US innovates, China produces and manufacturers,

and Europe regulates adding as a footnote before it even has a tech sector. So how are you thinking

through that strategic

question and this sort of provocative trope that goes around the European policy debate?

...