“Europe largely missed out on the digital revolution led by the internet and the productivity gains it brought: in fact, the productivity gap between the EU and the US is largely explained by the tech sector. The EU is weak in the emerging technologies that will drive future growth.” Mario Draghi, The Future of EU Competitiveness, 09 September 2024.

Silicon Continent is a weekly blog by Luis Garicano and Pieter Garicano that will try to understand why the EU is falling behind Asia and the US in AI, innovation and growth more generally. We will also aim to (much harder!) offer solutions and learn from other places. The blog will look at hard data, mostly from economics, and mix it up with case studies of success or failure.

The origin of the blog are many conversations between the two of us, living on opposite sides of Atlantic (Pieter in DC, Luis in London) about why there are less opportunities in Europe for business creation and innovation and what we can do about it.

Pieter is a PPE graduate from Oxford who writes full time for this blog. He previously worked in Energy/AI/Tech policy for a think tank. Luis is a Professor at LSE who was for a while also a politician.

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