UK productivity and policy
Despite a reversal of the trend of a century of low productivity from 1997 up to the financial crisis, UK growth has lagged far behind the US and its European comparators. Even after recovery from the 2008 crisis, productivity has flatlined at pre-crisis levels despite full employment.
We look to the cause of this "productivity puzzle" and combining the programme's 20-year findings on drivers of productivity with evidence from leading experts and stakeholders, set up two Growth Commissions and whose reports lay out policy remedies for sustainable long-term growth.
Our follow-on work on industrial policy explores challenges raised in these reports such as easing and targeting access to investment finance to innovative SMEs, reducing the tail of poorly performing firms by improving management practices, and improving universities' commercialisation of research and the diffusion of existing technologies.
While causes of the weakness of UK productivity growth pre-date the shocks of the financial crisis and the Brexit referendum result, the programme has also projected the additional impacts of different Brexit scenarios on the dynamic effects of reductions in productivity, (the trade and fiscal effects are tackled by the Trade programme).
These include decreases in product market competition and loss of benefits of innovation spillovers from multinationals and more productive foreign-owned firms some of which will move operations from the UK.
Featured Work
UK productivity and policy publications
Richard Davies, Nadim Hamdan and Gregory Thwaites
25 September 2023
Nicholas Bloom, Philip Bunn, Paul Mizen, Gregory Thwaites, Ivan Yotzov and Özgen Öztürk
7 August 2023
Christos Genakos, Costas Roumanias and Tommaso Valletti
21 July 2023
Paul Brandily, Mimosa Distefano, Krishan Shah, Gregory Thwaites and Anna Valero
22 June 2023
Pia Andres, Ralf Martin, Esin Serin, Arjun Shah and Anna Valero
22 June 2023
Esin Serin and Anna Valero
16 March 2023
Anna Valero and John Van Reenen
28 November 2022
Anna Valero and John Van Reenen
20 October 2022
Josh De Lyon, Ralf Martin, Juliana Oliveira-Cunha, Arjun Shah, Krishan Shah, Gregory Thwaites and Anna Valero
25 August 2022
Resolution Foundation and Centre for Economic Performance
5 August 2022
Brendan Curran, Ralf Martin, Sabrina Muller, Viet Nguyen-Tien, Juliana Oliveira-Cunha, Esin Serin, Arjun Shah, Anna Valero and Dennis Verhoeven
23 May 2022
Nicholas Bloom, Raffaella Sadun and John Van Reenen
20 May 2022
Josh De Lyon, Ralf Martin, Juliana Oliveira-Cunha, Arjun Shah, Krishan Shah, Gregory Thwaites and Anna Valero
28 April 2022
Philippe Aghion, Reda Cherif and Fuad Hasanov
20 January 2022