You could call it the productivity myth. It goes like this. European economies trail behind the US because their citizens would rather people-gaze from a pavement cafe than labour loyally in the corporate saltmines. Americans, on the other hand, are a bunch of stakhanovites so preoccupied with boosting their nation's gross domestic product they take just a week's vacation a year.

The conveniently simple notion that Europeans are poorer because they prefer leisure to work can no longer be supported by the data, however. In Japan, another troubled economy, it has never been true. The real explanation for the regions' undistinguished record is both more complex and - for the global laggards - more challenging.