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The Economist:
Mind The Gap: A lack of skilled workers and managers drags the country down

11 April 2015

According to one academic paper, about a quarter of Britain's productivity gap with America can be put down to poor management. The main weakness is that too many of Britain's family-owned firms still prefer primogeniture over meritocracy to select their top bosses, three times as often as German family-run firms do. But poor generals skills are to blame, too. Even after all the extra money spent on schools since the mid-1990s, Britain still performs at a mediocre level in internationally comparable tests. Recent reports suggest that about one-fifth of the adult population still lacks basic literacy and numeracy skills.

This article was published by The Economist on April 11, 2015
Link to article here

Related publications
Inherited family firms and management practices: the case for modernising the UK’s inheritance tax, Nicholas Bloom, CEP Policy Analysis, March 2006

Related links
Nick Bloom webpage
Productivity and Innovation Programme webpage
Management Practices and Organisational Structures Research webpage

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