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.

This is the main conclusion of a 30-year statistical study undertaken for the Centre for Economic Policy Research (Cepor) by Domenico Giannone and Lucrezia Reichlin, published today in The Euro Area Business Cycle: Stylized Facts and Measurement Issues.

It makes a purposeful valediction for Ms Reichlin, who has just left Cepor to head research at the European Central Bank.

On the surface, living in a steadier economy that is not so prone to booms and slumps seems a fair deal for eurozone citizens. In reality, as the authors show, they lose out from the stodge-and-suet syndrome.

America’s recessions, measured in output, are normally deeper than the eurozone’s, but this drawback is not felt by US consumers. By being able to borrow more, the authors suggest, US consumers maintain their living standards better during a recession.

Economies, in any case, do not just go round and round. Recessions are usually fairly short and shallow, while periods of expansion last longer and rise further. Most economic shocks are also beneficial.

America’s downturns are a quarter bigger than the eurozone’s, but its expansions are half as big as those in the European currency area.

The US also gets the benefit of expansions and growth boosts earlier than the eurozone and US expansions still last 50 per cent longer than the eurozone’s. In the long run, therefore, the US economy grows a quarter faster than the eurozone’s.

The US soufflé leaves the euro-pudding standing. To change the metaphor, this is one race in which the hare beats the tortoise. Ms Reichlin’s work might just convince the ECB that it needs to be more relaxed and allow continental economies to lighten up and be more flexible.

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