This paper investigates the relationship between product market competition and innovation. It uses the radical policy reforms in the UK as instruments for changes in product market competition, and finds a robust inverted-U relationship between competition and patenting. It then develops an...

Many papers have documented wide variations in productivity even in narrowly defined industries. Some have argued that this primarily reflects measurement problems due to, for example, comparing across different products. Others argue this reflects persistent differences in performance due, for...

We study the productivity of US owned plants in the UK. Using a new dataset that identifes foreign and domestic MNEs, we find that UK MNEs are less productive than US affliates, but as productive as non US foreign affliates. We investigate the source of the US and MNE advantage. We find evidence...

Recent attention has focused on the UK's productivity gap in the retail sector. A recent paper by Reynolds et al (2005) emphasises that a more thorough understanding of what drives productivity in the retail sector requires a better understanding of the 'complex mix of urban characteristics,...

Many critics of free-market liberalism argue that higher product-market competition and the "Anglo-Saxon" management practices it stimulates increases productivity only at the expense of employees' work-life balance (WLB). The empirical basis of these claims is unclear. To address this issue we...