A new report published by the Centre for Economic Policy Research finds that the American economy reacts faster and further than the eurozone economies. Even though the US downturns are a quarter bigger, the US gets the benefit of expansion and growth earlier, and its booms last 50% longer than the eurozone's. This is the up-side of flexibility. Even in the downturns, the US consumers can maintain their living standards better because they can borrow more. Furthermore, the shocks are usually brief, and have a beneficial side in speeding economic adaptation.

Graham Serjeant, financial editor of the Times, amusingly compares the two types of economy to different dishes:

If economies were rated as food, America's would be a soufflé and the eurozone's would be stodgy old-fashioned Christmas pudding. America’s flexible go-getting economy responds eagerly to cycles and shocks, rising and falling faster and farther in response to any change in the economic temperature. The eurozone, by contrast, has a tendency only to stay where it is. Its stolid mass is slower to expand or contract, varies less either way and takes up to ten years longer than the US to respond fully to external shocks such as the worldwide web or dear oil.

If there is a moral, it seems to be that those who opt for a quiet, smooth life do less well than those prepared to ride its peaks and troughs.