“When the world’s biggest economy and the world’s biggest emerging economy look for lessons in the same place at the same time, you know something is up,” said Kenneth Rogoff, a professor at Harvard University and former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, who is one of the 2,500 participants in Davos this year. “We are seeing a paradigm shift towards a more European, a more social state.”…

The new shift is likely to go well beyond expensive short-term fixes. The ferment suggests that ultimately the United States may move closer to Europe, altering the trickle-down economic doctrine of the past three decades and establishing a new social contract aimed at narrowing the gap between the rich and the rest of society, officials and economists say…

As Pascal Lamy, director general of the World Trade Organization and another Davos regular, put it: “It’s a cultural revolution.”