Venture capital is surging, too. Almost as important, the arrival of the single currency has sparked a big wave of merger, acquisition, and restructuring activity. That in turn has sharpened the Continent's once dull appetite for creative destruction. Still another sign of a New Economy in the making is the surge in technology spending. Productivity gains from those investments might add up to half a percentage point to the annual growth of the EU economy by 2003, estimate economists at Salomon Smith Barney.
Examples abound of productivity driven by info tech.
The productivity gains may be filtering through to the service sector, where they are notoriously difficult to measure. Meanwhile, after years of lagging behind, Europe seems to be developing its own job-creating tech sector. Europe's smaller countries have been the most successful in creating high-growth economies. Each of these countries is creating jobs in record numbers, partly because they have led the way in structural economic reforms. For Europe's New Economy to get going, though, the bigger countries need to get into the act.