A very important question: Does growth converge towards potential growth or does potential growth converge towards growth?

When the unemployment rate approaches the structural unemployment rate (we look at the situations of the United States and the euro zone), growth is expected to get closer to potential growth. But there are two possibilities to the dynamics of this convergence between growth and potential growth: Either growth converges towards potential growth. If growth is high and potential growth is low (this is the case in particular in the United States at present), growth will slow back down to the level of potential growth, which is the maximum achievable growth rate at full employment, given technological progress and demographics; Or potential growth converges towards growth. If growth is high and potential growth is low, investment surges , productivity gains rise, the participation rate rises and potential growth rises, which enables actual growth to remain high. An examination of the past in the United States and the euro zone shows: An increase in potential growth only in the late 1990s, due to productivity in the United States and to the labour force in the euro zone; The absence of any acceleration in potential growth in the late 1980s or prior to the 2008 crisis. The second scenario therefore seems the more likely.