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What is Holding Back UK Productivity? Lessons from Decades of Measurement

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Geoff Mason ,
Mary O'Mahony  and
Rebecca Riley
Geoff Mason
Affiliation:
NIESR and Centre for Learning and Life Chances, UCL Institute of Education
Mary O'Mahony
Affiliation:
NIESR, Centre for Learning and Life Chances, UCL Institute of Education and Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence
Rebecca Riley*
Affiliation:
NIESR, Centre for Learning and Life Chances, UCL Institute of Education and Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence
*
E-mail: r.riley@niesr.ac.uk
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Abstract

UK labour productivity is significantly lower than that of many other similarly advanced economies and has been so for decades, with negative implications for UK living standards. To make matters worse, during the last ten years labour productivity growth has stalled in most industrialised countries, and particularly in the UK. This has led to a renewed policy focus on productivity growth, as evidenced by successive government productivity plans and efforts to re-invigorate industrial strategy. This paper reviews the evidence on UK productivity performance, identifying what we know about the causes of its weakness, what we do not know and what this means for policy. We review the evidence through the lens of developments in economic measurement, drawing in particular on the work of National Institute colleagues past and present, and with a view to the key measurement challenges ahead that, unlocked, will help us understand better what is holding back UK productivity.

Keywords

productivitymeasurementcross-country comparisonindustry studiesskillsbusiness micro-dataD24E01I25L11L60L80M10O30O47
Type
Research Articles
Information
National Institute Economic Review , Volume 246 , November 2018 , pp. R24 - R35
Copyright
Copyright © 2018 National Institute of Economic and Social Research

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