“If you are an entrepreneur, the best thing you can do is move to the US.” This is not the boast of a proud American but the advice one successful German entrepreneur hands out to his compatriots.

“如果你是一位创业者的话，你能做的最好的事情就是搬到美国去。”这并非骄傲的美国人的自吹自擂，而是一位成功的德国企业家奉送给他的同胞们的建议。

I heard this at a recent conference on how to revive growth and jobs in Europe. It is typical of the stories told by frustrated European entrepreneurs. Europe has one of the most skilled workforces on the planet, they say, so why doesn’t it have its own Facebook, Google or Apple?

我是在最近一个有关如何重振欧洲经济增长和就业的会议上听到这番话的。这是失望的欧洲企业家讲述的典型故事。他们说，欧洲拥有世界上技能最高的劳动力群体之一，但为什么涌现不出Facebook、谷歌(Google)或者苹果(Apple)呢？

They complain that regulators and companies have battened down the hatches as waves of technological change sweep in from the west. Europe seems condemned to be disrupted, rather than to disrupt. That may be so, but I wonder whether a European Silicon Valley is really the answer to the continent’s economic problems.

他们抱怨称，在科技变革浪潮从美国扑面而来之际，监管机构和企业消极对待。欧洲似乎注定要被外人颠覆现状，而非自己去颠覆现状。可能是这样吧，但我纳闷的是，欧洲版的硅谷是否真的能够解决这个大陆的经济问题？

That is not to say that innovation is unimportant if you want to generate growth and jobs. Even though big companies are generally more productive than small ones, OECD research shows that there are tight correlations between productivity growth and dynamism in the corporate world: higher corporate “birth” and “death” rates enable resources to move where they can be best used.

这并不是说如果你希望创造经济增长和就业，创新不重要。尽管大企业一般比小公司的生产率更高，但经合组织(OECD)的研究显示，生产率增长与企业界活力之间存在密切关联度：公司“诞生”和“死亡”率较高，能够让资源转移到最善于利用它们的地方。

At the same time, new companies come up with novel ideas that force complacent old incumbents to boost their own levels of productivity.

与此同时，新公司带来新颖创意，迫使自满的老牌企业提高自己的生产率。

So, it is not surprising that European entrepreneurs cast jealous glances across the Atlantic, where there are fewer problems to contend with. In Europe, the flow of credit to small businesses has been hampered by the hangover of bad debts from the financial crisis and regulators’ attempts to make the system safer. The US did a better job of flushing out the rotten loans from the system.

因此，欧洲企业家对美国投以艳羡的目光并不奇怪，在美国要应对的问题较少。在欧洲，流向小企业的信贷受到金融危机遗留坏账以及监管机构提高银行体系安全度的努力的阻碍。美国在清理银行体系坏账方面做得更出色。

The US is also a true single market, which makes it easier for a small company to expand quickly across a population of more than 300m. In Europe, despite frequent pledges to “complete” the single market for services, companies that want to exploit the scale of the continent must contend with a thicket of regulations that vary from country to country.

此外，美国是一个真正的单一市场，这使得小公司更容易在逾3亿人口的市场快速扩张。在欧洲，尽管多次承诺要“完善”服务业单一市场，但希望利用欧洲大陆规模的公司必须应对各国不尽相同的众多监管规定。

But in spite of all the US’s advantages — in spite of its Elon Musks, its Facebooks and its Ubers — the country is doing no better than the eurozone when it comes to productivity growth. In fact, this year it is doing worse.

然而，尽管美国具备所有优势，尽管美国有埃隆•马斯克(Elon Musk)、Facebook以及优步(Uber)等等，但美国在生产率增长方面并不比欧元区更出色。实际上，今年美国的表现更糟。

Figures published last week by the Conference Board, a US think-tank, suggest productivity is set to fall in the US for the first time in three decades. American workers are producing about 0.2 per cent less gross domestic product per hour than they were last year. Even workers in the eurozone are doing better than that: their output per hour is about 0.3 per cent higher.

美国智库——世界大型企业联合会(Conference Board)最近发布的数据显示，美国的生产率将出现30年来首次下滑。美国员工每小时创造的国内生产总值(GDP)比去年下滑0.2%左右。甚至连欧元区的员工的表现也好于美国：他们的每小时产出比去年高出0.3%左右。

Productivity growth has slowed across the developed and developing world in recent years. Yet it is particularly puzzling in the country that has produced some of the most innovative companies.

近年发达国家和发展中国家的生产率增速都有所放缓。然而，在涌现了不少最创新企业的美国，这一点尤其令人困惑。

What is going on? Some argue that today’s innovations are simply not as transformative as those of the past. Others think the “diffusion machine” may be broken: that innovation is simply not seeping out from a handful of groundbreaking companies into the rest of the economy.

发生了什么？一些人认为，现在的创新不像过去那样具有变革意义。还有一些人认为，“扩散机制”可能出了故障：创新没有从少数突破性公司传导至经济其他领域。

If you look past the frenetic activity around San Francisco, you see the number of business start-ups in the US as a whole has slumped, just as it has in Europe.

如果你把目光投向旧金山周边狂热活动的范围以外，你会看到，美国初创企业的数量已减少，就像欧洲那样。

Work published by the OECD suggests that there is a growing divide between “frontier” businesses and the rest of the economy, with some regions and workers left behind in a low-skill, low-productivity trap.

经合组织的研究报告似乎显示，“前沿”企业与经济其他领域之间的差距越来越大，一些地区和劳动者落入低技能、低生产率的陷阱。

Indeed, policymakers gathered in Paris for the OECD’s annual meetings this week are starting to explore the possibility that there is a vicious circle between rising inequality and slowing productivity.

的确，最近齐聚巴黎出席经合组织年会的政策制定者们开始探讨这种可能性：不平等程度上升与生产率放缓之间存在一个恶性循环。

Whatever the origins of the world’s productivity problem, Silicon Valley does not seem to be supplying the solution. While America’s great technology companies have changed the way we live and generated vast wealth for some people, they have not triggered a widespread improvement in US productivity or household incomes.

不管全球生产率问题的根源在哪里，硅谷似乎不会提供解决问题的良方。尽管美国的一流科技公司改变了我们的生活方式，并为某些人创造了巨大财富，但它们没有带来美国生产率或家庭收入的普遍提高。

Some Europeans may hanker after a Silicon Valley of their own. But the better question is not why Europe cannot emulate America’s brand of innovation but why America’s brand of innovation does not seem to work for the economy any more.

一些欧洲人可能期待打造自己的硅谷。但更好的问题并不是欧洲为何无法仿效美国式的创新，而是美国的创新为何似乎不再起到推动经济的作用。