This paper analyses the characteristics of firms that operate at the global productivity frontier and their relationship with other firms in the economy, focusing on the diffusion of global productivity gains and the policies that faciliate it. Firms at the global productivity frontier –...

This paper provides new evidence on the main characteristics of laggard firms - firms in the bottom 40% of the productivity distribution - and their potential for productivity growth. It finds that laggards are on average younger and smaller than more productive firms, and matter for aggregate...

In this paper, we aim to bring the debate on the global productivity slowdown – which has largely been conducted from a macroeconomic perspective – to a more micro-level. We show that a particularly striking feature of the productivity slowdown is not so much a lower productivity growth at...

Productivity growth is the main driver of living standards. But productivity has slowed down over the past decade, starting already before the crisis. This paper shows that this is linked to a slowdown in the diffusion of global frontier innovations to other firms and difficulties in...