Notably, productivity in Europe increased rapidly in the decades after World War II but then decelerated around the mid-1990s, at about the same time that U.S. productivity growth began to increase. Thus the gap between productivity levels in the United States and Europe, which had nearly closed by 1995, has been widening since then.
Even if novel domains of economic activities continued to emerge to the extent that payment services were provided in these unprecedented domains, it would be desirable that the unit of account in such novel domains was connected with that of the real world. Closing Remarks As I bring my remarks to a close, let me briefly touch upon CBDC.