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For two decades, the UK economy has seen weak growth, driven by low business investment, inadequate market dynamism and persistent policy instability. These failures shape the daily reality of households whose living sta...Read more...
Aadya Bahl
22 October 2025
The gap in living standards between the UK and US has widened sharply in recent years. Aadya Bahl argues that reversing this trend means confronting the UK's deep-rooted productivity and investment challenges....Read more...
19 August 2025
In the first half of 2025, the US and some of its trading partners announced significant changes to import tariffs. This column uses newly designed questions to study the impact of these changes on UK firms and to assess...Read more...
Nicholas Bloom, Philip Bunn, Paul Mizen, Veenaa Sasikaran, Krishan Shah, Gregory Thwaites and Ivan Yotzov
27 July 2025
To succeed, the industrial strategy needs to build strong local ecosystems in places where the eight priority sectors can thrive. The example of Greater Manchester shows why investment must be joined-up and focused on ma...Read more...
22 July 2025
Comparatively sluggish productivity growth is one of the UK’s biggest policy challenges. Past strategies to solve the problem have lacked both sustained commitment and proper evaluation. Anna Valero and Bart van Ark call...Read more...
Anna Valero and Bart van Ark
20 June 2024
The collapse in productivity growth underlies many of the problems of the UK economy – from squeezed public services to stagnant living standards. Productivity growth in the UK has been weak relative to its own past and...Read more...
Anna Valero and John Van Reenen
12 June 2024
Firms across many advanced economies have faced a significant increase in the interest rates paid on borrowing and received on deposits since 2021. Krishan Shah, Nick Bloom, Philip Bunn, Paul Mizen, Gregory Thwaites and ...Read more...
Nicholas Bloom, Philip Bunn, Paul Mizen, Krishan Shah, Gregory Thwaites and Ivan Yotzov
26 April 2024
The Spring Budget 2024 prioritised short-run tax cuts, with Chancellor Jeremy Hunt taking an extra 2% off national insurance contributions. This was anticipated, given we are in an election year - but it marks another mi...Read more...
Esin Serin, Anna Valero and Dimitri Zenghelis
6 March 2024
Investing too little for one year is manageable, but doing so year after year is a recipe for relative decline. This is precisely what the UK has been doing and where it finds itself. Anna Valero and James Smith discuss ...Read more...
Anna Valero
27 February 2024
Krishan Shah, Nicholas Bloom, Philip Bunn, Paul Mizen, Gregory Thwaites, and Ivan Yotzov analyse new firm-level data to explore future remote work trends. Managers expect 2028 remote work levels to mirror those of 2023, ...Read more...
18 February 2024
In the global race for supremacy in 21st century markets, the UK must create expertise in building and deploying new energy technologies, and access the opportunities for stronger and more resilient growth that will brin...Read more...
Anna Valero and Dimitri Zenghelis
9 February 2024
Comparatively sluggish productivity growth is one of the UK's biggest policy challenges. Past strategies to solve the problem have lacked commitment and proper evaluation. One solution could be to establish a growth and ...Read more...
25 January 2024
It is now widely accepted that the UK has a major productivity growth problem, with chronic underinvestment across both the public and private sectors being a key cause. Continued low public investment, as laid out in th...Read more...
Esin Serin, Nicholas Stern, Anna Valero, John Van Reenen, Bob Ward and Dimitri Zenghelis
22 January 2024
The UK Government has an opportunity to mobilise far greater amounts of private investment for public policy priorities than is the case now. Blended finance, deployed well, offers a tried and tested pathway for public a...Read more...
Sarah Gordon and Anna Valero
26 October 2023
The UK investment ecosystem needs rewiring across the board to increase firms' desire to invest in productive and sustainable assets, and to enhance their ability to do so. Paul Brandily, Mimosa Distefano, Krishan Shah, ...Read more...
Paul Brandily, Mimosa Distefano, Krishan Shah, Gregory Thwaites and Anna Valero
24 October 2023
20 October 2023
Britain's productivity shortfall is its foundational economic problem. Debate about this gap and how to fix it typically focus on raising productivity of existing firms, via two routes. First, innovation: investment, R&D...Read more...
Richard Davies, Nadim Hamdan and Gregory Thwaites
25 September 2023
Rishi Sunak was propelled into explaining his new position in a hastily arranged press conference after details of plans to adjust (water down) his commitment to green policies were leaked to the BBC. Anna Valero and Lor...Read more...
20 September 2023
What do we mean when we talk about inequality between firms? Are inequalities between firms limiting UK business dynamism? And do governments need to step in and enforce competition rules? In this podcast episode, John V...Read more...
John Van Reenen
30 August 2023
Since 2021, inflation rates have increased sharply in many advanced economies. Philip Bunn, Nicholas Bloom, Paul Mizen, Ozgen Ozturk, Gregory Thwaites and Ivan Yotzov study firm pricing strategies during the recent perio...Read more...
Nicholas Bloom, Philip Bunn, Paul Mizen, Gregory Thwaites, Ivan Yotzov and Özgen Öztürk
7 August 2023
Across a range of everyday markets, consumers make recurrent tariff choices in the face of a multitude of fees and plans, leading to concerns they may fail to make optimal choices of suppliers or contracts. Christos Gena...Read more...
Christos Genakos, Costas Roumanias and Tommaso Valletti
21 July 2023
The UK is a low investment nation. Low business investment is a big driver of this. Low investment is one reason behind the UK's weak productivity growth, which in turn is the main reason behind the stagnation in UK livi...Read more...
22 June 2023
This is the decade for managing the immense risks of climate change, and delivery on net zero. That means rapidly increasing the share of renewable sources in our energy mix alongside a step-change in energy and resource...Read more...
Pia Andres, Ralf Martin, Esin Serin, Arjun Shah and Anna Valero
Growth and productivity are often talked about in UK politics but how are they linked and what effect do they have on the economy? John Van Reenen explains....Read more...
19 May 2023
Richard Davies speaks to Clare Lombardelli, Chief Economic Adviser at HM Treasury and Joint Head of the Government Economic Service....Read more...
Richard Davies and Clare Lombardelli
21 April 2023
