"The French Write Whole Books about Being Bored"

At Davos, Edmund Phelps said:

Edmund S. Phelps, McVickar Professor of Political Economy, Columbia University, USA, praised the American preference for unbridled capitalism over Europe’s "recipe for stagnation", saying Europe’s vast and expensive welfare state discourages a culture of entrepreneurship. Phelps argued that an economy’s chief responsibility is to excite and captivate the people who work in it. "The French write whole books about being bored," said Phelps.

With that introduction, here's Phelps' explanation for why he believes Europe lags behind the US in economic performance. It's from the Opinion Journal at the WSJ. I don't agree with all that he says, but if you win a Nobel prize, you get to have your ideas put up for discussion:

Entrepreneurial Culture, Why European economies lag behind the U.S., by Edmund Phelps, Commentary, WSJ (Free): The nations of Continental Western Europe, in the reforms they make to try to raise their economic performance, may prove to be a testing ground for the view that culture matters for a society's economic results. As is increasingly admitted, the economic performance in nearly every Continental country is generally poor compared to the U.S...

It is reasonable to infer that the economic systems on the Continent are not well structured for high performance. In my view, the Continental economies began to be underperformers in the interwar period, and have remained so...

What could be the origins of such underperformance? ... The task is to find the underlying cause, or causes, of the entire syndrome of poorer employment, productivity, employee engagement and job satisfaction.

Many economists attribute the Continent's higher unemployment and lower participation, if not also its lower productivity, to the Continent's social model--in particular, the plethora of social insurance entitlements and the taxes to pay for them. The standard argument is fallacious, though. The consequent reduction of after-tax wage rates is unlikely to be an enduring disincentive to work, for reduced earnings will bring reduced saving; and once private wealth has fallen to its former ratio to after-tax wages, people will be as motivated to work as before.

An indictment of entitlements has to focus on the huge "social wealth" that the welfare state creates at the stroke of the pen. Yet statistical tests of the effects of welfare spending on employment yield erratic results. In any case, it is hard to see that scaling down entitlements would be transformative for economic performance...

In my thesis, the Continental economies' root problem is a dearth of economic dynamism--loosely, the rate of commercially successful innovation. ... The level of dynamism is a matter of how fertile the country is in coming up with innovative ideas..., [and] how adept it is at identifying and nourishing the ideas with the best prospects...

There is evidence of such a dearth. Germany, Italy and France appear to possess less dynamism than do the U.S. and the others. Far fewer firms break into the top ranks in the former, and fewer employees are reported to have jobs with extensive freedom in decision-making--which is essential at companies engaged in novel, and thus creative, activity.

Further, I argue that the cause of that dearth of dynamism lies in the sort of "economic model" found in most, if not all, of the Continental countries. ...

There are two dimensions to a country's economic model. One part consists of its economic institutions. These institutions on the Continent do not look to be good for dynamism. They typically exhibit a Balkanized/segmented financial sector favoring insiders, myriad impediments and penalties placed before outsider entrepreneurs, a consumer sector not venturesome about new products or short of the needed education, union voting (not just advice) in management decisions, and state interventionism. Some studies of mine on what attributes determine which of the advanced economies are the least vibrant ... pointed to the strength in the less vibrant economies of inhibiting institutions such as employment protection legislation and red tape, and to the weakness of enabling institutions, such as a well-functioning stock market and ample liberal-arts education.

The other part of the economic model consists of various elements of the country's economic culture. Some cultural attributes in a country may have direct effects on performance--on top of their indirect effects through the institutions they foster. Values and attitudes are analogous to institutions--some impede, others enable. They are as much a part of the "economy," ... as the institutions are...

There is evidence from University of Michigan "values surveys" that working-age people in the Continent's Big Three differ somewhat from those in the U.S. and the other comparator countries in the number of them expressing various "values" in the workplace.

The values that might impact dynamism are of special interest here. Relatively few in the Big Three report that they want jobs offering opportunities for achievement (42% in France and 54% in Italy, versus an average of 73% in Canada and the U.S.); chances for initiative in the job (38% in France and 47% in Italy, as against an average of 53% in Canada and the U.S.), and even interesting work (59% in France and Italy, versus an average of 71.5% in Canada and the U.K). Relatively few are keen on taking responsibility, or freedom (57% in Germany and 58% in France as against 61% in the U.S. and 65% in Canada), and relatively few are happy about taking orders (Italy 1.03, of a possible 3.0, and Germany 1.13, as against 1.34 in Canada and 1.47 in the U.S.).

Perhaps many would be willing to take it for granted that the spirit of stimulation, problem-solving, mastery and discovery has impacts on a country's dynamism and thus on its economic performance. ... As luck would have it, a study of 18 advanced countries I conducted last summer found that inter-country differences in each of the performance indicators are significantly explained by the intercountry differences in the above cultural values. ...

The weakness of these values on the Continent is not the only impediment to a revival of dynamism there. There is the solidarist aim of protecting the "social partners"--communities and regions, business owners, organized labor and the professions--from disruptive market forces. There is also the consensualist aim of blocking business initiatives that lack the consent of the "stakeholders"--those, such as employees, customers and rival companies, thought to have a stake besides the owners. There is an intellectual current elevating community and society over individual engagement and personal growth, which springs from antimaterialist and egalitarian strains in Western culture. There is also the "scientism" that holds that state-directed research is the key to higher productivity. Equally, there is the tradition of hierarchical organization in Continental countries. Lastly, there a strain of anti-commercialism. "A German would rather say he had inherited his fortune than say he made it himself," the economist Hans-Werner Sinn once remarked to me.

In my earlier work, I had organized my thinking around some intellectual currents--solidarism, consensualism, anti-commercialism and conformism--that emerged as a reaction on the Continent to the Enlightenment and to capitalism in the 19th century. It would be understandable if such a climate had a dispiriting effect on potential entrepreneurs. But to be candid, I had not imagined that Continental Man might be less entrepreneurial. It did not occur to me that he had less need for mental challenge, problem-solving, initiative and responsibility.

It may be that the Continentals finding, over the 19th and early 20th century, that there was little opportunity or reward to exercise freedom and responsibility, learned not to care much about those values. Similarly, it may be that Americans, having assimilated large doses of freedom and initiative for generations, take those things for granted. That appears to be what Tocqueville thought...

The most basic point to carry away is that the empirical results related here lend support to the Enlightenment theme that a nation's culture ultimately makes a difference for the nation's economic performance in all its aspects--productivity, prosperity and personal growth.

It was a mistake of the Continental Europeans to think that they expressed the right values--right for them. These values led them to evolve economic models bringing in train a level of economic performance with which most working-age people are now discontented. Perhaps the way out--to go from unsatisfactory performance to high performance--will require not only reform of institutions but also a cultural shift that returns Europe to the philosophical roots that put it on the map to begin with.