Skip to main content
As Andy Burnham takes over as Prime Minister, Manchesterism is increasingly discussed as a blueprint for the rest of the country. But Aadya Bahl argues that much of the success of Greater Manchester depended on local con...Read more...
Aadya Bahl
21 July 2026
The Labour government set raising economic growth as its central target while in power. The new figures published by the Office for National Statistics suggest that the economy is doing a lot better than expected. John V...Read more...
John Van Reenen
15 May 2026
The conflict in the Middle East has pushed energy prices sharply higher, but the implications for UK inflation will depend on the scale and duration of the shock as well as its propagation through firms' costs, prices, m...Read more...
Nicholas Bloom, Philip Bunn, Paul Mizen, Gregory Thwaites and Ivan Yotzov
11 May 2026
The transition to net zero can bring economic benefits - improving productivity and living standards while tackling climate change and this collection of briefing papers shows how. Pathways to productive and inclusive ne...Read more...
Pia Andres, Chiara Cavaglia, Sam Fankhauser, Ilya Ilin, Francois Lafond, Fulvia Marotta, Ralf Martin, Sandra McNally, Viet Nguyen-Tien, Alice Owen, Emilien Ravigne, Maxwell Read, Xiyu Ren, Misato Sato, Aurelien Saussay, Arjun Shah, Trang Thu Tran, Anna Valero, Guglielmo Ventura, Dennis Verhoeven, Francesco Vona and Golvine de Rochambeau
13 February 2026
Productivity powers economic growth and shapes living standards. Yet the UK continues to falter on both counts. Low productivity and weak investment have become defining features of the economy, and this year's Budget wi...Read more...
25 November 2025
Productivity powers economic growth and raises living standards. But the UK has witnessed a prolonged period of stagnation, marked by weak economic productivity growth. While the reasons behind this slowdown are often de...Read more...
24 November 2025
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...
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...
30 August 2023
