A common view is that the performance of the UK economy between 1997 and 2010 under Labour was very weak and that the current economic problems are a consequence of poor policies in this period. In this report, we analyse the historical performance of the UK economy since 1997 compared with...

Please see the CEP #ElectionEconomics report(Paper 1)and the Executive Summary (Paper 2) that cover all the election 2015 briefings, discussing the research evidence on 15 of the UK's key policy battlegrounds: immigration, austerity, real wages and living standards, productivity and business,...

A common view is that the performance of the UK economy between 1997 and 2010 under Labour was very weak and that the current economic problems are a consequence of poor policies in this period. In this report, we analyse the historical performance of the UK economy since 1997 compared with...

UK productivity stagnated after the Great Recession of 2008-09 and remains about 15 percent below historical trends. This 'productivity puzzle' is due to a mixture of cyclical and structural effects - the fall is not entirely permanent; and has led to a widening of the longstanding gap with...

We survey the micro and macro literature on the impact of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) on productivity. The "Solow Paradox" of the absence of an impact of ICT on productivity no longer holds, if it ever did. Both growth accounting and econometric evidence suggest an...

The austerity programme of the coalition government knocked at least one percent per year off growth in the first two years of this Parliament. In retrospect, this looks like a mistake and the slower pace of austerity in 2012 to 2013 and thereafter was welcome (as was the setting up of the...

John Van Reenen examines the 'unbalancing' of Britain's economy away from manufacturing since 1979.

Over the last decade the World Management Survey (WMS) has collected firm-level management practices data across multiple sectors and countries. We developed the survey to try to explain the large and persistent TFP differences across firms and countries. This review paper discusses what has...

There are strong links between the performance of US manufacturing plants and the quality of their systems of monitoring, targets and incentives, according to research by Professor Nicholas Bloom and colleagues. Their analysis of data on more than 30,000 establishments, gathered in the first...

John Van Reenen examines the 'unbalancing' of Britain's economy away from manufacturing since 1979.