Many explanations for the recent productivity growth improvement in Britain have centered on changes in the labor market, arising from the changing role of trade unions for example. This paper asks whether changes in the product market are part of the story. The author proposes a model of...

We estimate mark-ups of price over marginal cost for UK manufacturing, based on the approach of Hall (1988). We also extend his method to allow for varying mark-ups over industries and the cycle. Using data on 16 two-digit industries, 1968-89, we find: (1) the average mark-up in UK manufacturing...