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

The Census Bureau recently conducted a survey of management practices in over 30,000 plants across the US, the first large-scale survey of management in America. Analyzing these data reveals several striking results. First, more structured management practices are tightly linked to better...

We explain a counterintuitive empirical finding: Firms facing more import competition do more innovation. In our model, factors are trapped inside a firm. An increase in import competition encourages a firm to innovate by reducing the opportunity cost of inputs. Without trapped factors, trade...

GDP per worker fell for the five years after 2008 which is unprecedented in post war UK history. In this paper we argue that "capital shallowing" (i.e. the fall in the capital-labour ratio) could be the main reason for this. This is likely to have occurred due to changes in factor prices: a...

During this election period many Americans are feeling angry towards the very rich, especially those working in the financial sector, who helped cause the Great Recession and yet were bailed out by the government. Increases in inequality might be tolerable at a time of growing consumption for...

Economists have long puzzled over the astounding differences in productivity between firms and countries. In this paper, we present evidence on a possible explanation for persistent differences in productivity at the firm and the national level -- namely, that such differences largely reflect...