Demonstrably durable

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: 14% between 1999 and 2007, according to a recent article in the ECB’s Monthly Bulletin. But in Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain, they rose by 10-20 percentage points more (see chart 1). That makes it harder for firms in these countries to compete with rivals in the rest of the euro area.

This group is suffering badly in the downturn. Housing busts in Ireland and Spain have crushed domestic demand. Tax receipts that had been swollen by booms in consumer spending and housing have shrivelled. With unemployment rising too, public finances are worsening. Portugal has struggled to dig itself out of the rut it fell into when its convergence boom turned to bust in 2000. Greece, like Portugal and Spain, has a big current-account deficit. Italy has a smaller trade gap but, like Greece, has huge public debt. As the prospects for economic growth fade, investors are starting to demand far higher interest rates for holding their sovereign debt than for the safest German government bonds (see chart 2).

Although all the euro area’s members, including super-competitive Germany, are troubled, recovery is likely to prove most difficult where wage growth has run far ahead of productivity gains. Firms will find it harder to dislodge cheaper imports from their home markets and will struggle to keep up with their euro-area peers abroad. The old remedy of a lower exchange rate is no longer available. For that reason “it is far from self-evident that it is better to be inside the euro than outside it,” says Francesco Caselli, of the London School of Economics. In 1992, the last time Europe lived through such currency-market squalls, both Britain and Italy were forced to devalue their currencies against other EU nations. Neither country regretted it, says Mr Caselli.

Are Italy, Spain and the other countries struggling with high wage costs and low productivity eyeing Britain enviously, as its currency slumps and its relative wage costs fall with it? Or is Britain wishing it were, like Italy, safe inside the euro ark? Britain has been harder hit by the credit crunch: it had a huge housing boom that is turning to bust; it has a large financial sector, which is now shrinking fast; and its households are more indebted than even America’s.