AV receivers in Europe/Asia have much higher THD than N.America.?

In the US the electronics industry is regulated by the RIAA and legislation, in the early 60's equipment started coming in from Japan with outrageous ratings like 1000 watts a channel and things like that but they did not sound that good nor push that hard......to help stem this trend and help the American industry compete standards were imposed that still exist today...in Europe and Asia some of these claims are still being made I would not think there is too much difference between .2 and .05 some high end amps have .2 as a distortion level, and sound perfectly fine...it might be the same amp but in order to give it a higher output rating they have pushed the amp a little harder hence more distortion, but higher output rating...another thing you have to look at is the method of testing, some amps are rated at only 1Hz so you do not know what the distortion levels are at 40Hz or 16kHz which would be much more important to know, also an amp can push a lot harder on a test signal only coming in at 1Hz and not 20 to 20,000Hz so your power output ratings will look higher....than one tested at 20Hz to 20kHz...