Rebecca Riley (Centre of Excellence, NIESR)

XVI IDP Lecture – Organised by SOAS Economics Research Cluster on Industrial Development and Policy.

Many advanced economies have seen a slowdown in productivity growth since the middle of the 2000s. In the UK this slowdown has been particularly stark. A decade on from the global financial crisis UK productivity levels are little different to what they were at their peak in 2007. In this paper we use new data to provide a detailed account of the weakness of UK productivity, documenting patterns across industry sectors and across the sources of growth. Productivity weakness has been pervasive across many UK industries. But, as we move further away from the crisis, the slowdown in aggregate productivity growth is increasingly apparent in particular pockets of the economy. We also discuss the likely implications of measurement error for the interpretation of our findings.
Rebecca Riley is director of the Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence (ESCoE) at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research.
The lecture is followed by a roundtable discussion chaired by Antonio Andreoni (SOAS) with Lord David Sainsbury, Ciaran Driver (SOAS) and Mike Gregory (Cambridge).

Event Date: 24 January 2018

Released by: SOAS Economics Podcast