Elephantroom:
before of all, thank you for the Nacco link,very useful,
then, I think is better to define exactly the variables we are analysing.
For example during 2011 the population in Europe was 711 millions of persons,but if you consider only the European Union,they are only 502 millions.
At the same time during 2011 the orders basis were 371771 in Europe and 169682 in North America.
Populations and orders have almost the same ratio of 2.2