scholarly journals IS THE UK PRODUCTIVITY SLOWDOWN UNPRECEDENTED?

2020 ◽  
Vol 251 ◽  
pp. R47-R53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Crafts ◽  
Terence C. Mills
Keyword(s):  
Financial Crisis ◽  
Productivity Growth ◽  
Labour Productivity ◽  
Filter Method ◽  
Productivity Slowdown ◽  
The Past ◽  
Labour Productivity Growth ◽  
The Uk

We estimate trend UK labour productivity growth using a Hodrick-Prescott filter method. We use the results to compare downturns where the economy fell below its pre-existing trend. We find that the current productivity slowdown has resulted in productivity being 19.7 per cent below the pre-2008 trend path in 2018. This is nearly double the previous worst productivity shortfall ten years after the start of a downturn. On this criterion the slowdown is unprecedented in the past 250 years. We conjecture that this reflects a combination of adverse circumstances, namely, a financial crisis, a weakening impact of ICT and impending Brexit.

What is Holding Back UK Productivity? Lessons from Decades of Measurement

2018 ◽  
Vol 246 ◽  
pp. R24-R35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geoff Mason ◽  
Mary O'Mahony ◽  
Rebecca Riley
Keyword(s):  
Productivity Growth ◽  
Labour Productivity ◽  
Living Standards ◽  
Labour Productivity Growth ◽  
Advanced Economies ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Industrialised Countries ◽  
Holding Back

UK labour productivity is significantly lower than that of many other similarly advanced economies and has been so for decades, with negative implications for UK living standards. To make matters worse, during the last ten years labour productivity growth has stalled in most industrialised countries, and particularly in the UK. This has led to a renewed policy focus on productivity growth, as evidenced by successive government productivity plans and efforts to re-invigorate industrial strategy. This paper reviews the evidence on UK productivity performance, identifying what we know about the causes of its weakness, what we do not know and what this means for policy. We review the evidence through the lens of developments in economic measurement, drawing in particular on the work of National Institute colleagues past and present, and with a view to the key measurement challenges ahead that, unlocked, will help us understand better what is holding back UK productivity.

Sooner than you think: the Pre-1914 UK Productivity Slowdown was Victorian not Edwardian

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 736-748
Author(s):  
Nicholas Crafts ◽  
Terence C Mills
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War I ◽  
Productivity Growth ◽  
Labour Productivity ◽  
World War ◽  
Productivity Slowdown ◽  
Labour Productivity Growth ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Bank Of England ◽  
Severe Deterioration

Abstract This paper re-examines UK productivity growth in the decades before World War I using a new dataset compiled by the Bank of England. We find that the productivity slowdown of the early twentieth century was quite modest and does not deserve to be called a climacteric. A more serious slowdown in labour productivity growth occurred in the 1870s. Neither of these episodes should be regarded as a precedent for the current severe deterioration in UK productivity performance. Nor should a late-Victorian productivity slowdown be attributed to the end of the steam age despite the popularity of this belief.

Productivity Growth, Structural Change and Informality: The Case of Russia

2015 ◽  
pp. 30-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
I. Voskoboynikov ◽  
V. Gimpelson
Keyword(s):  
Structural Change ◽  
Productivity Growth ◽  
Labour Productivity ◽  
Alternative Methods ◽  
Industry Effects ◽  
Labour Productivity Growth ◽  
Russian Economy ◽  
Negative Effect ◽  
Total Labour

This study considers the influence of structural change on aggregate labour productivity growth of the Russian economy. The term "structural change" refers to labour reallocation both between industries and between formal and informal segments within an industry. Using Russia KLEMS and official Rosstat data we decompose aggregate labour productivity growth into intra-industry (within) and between industry effects with four alternative methods of the shift-share analysis. All methods provide consistent results and demonstrate that total labour reallocation has been growth enhancing though the informality expansion has had a negative effect. As our study suggests, it is caused by growing variation in productivity levels across industries.

Improving management as a way to increase labour productivity

Upravlenie ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 24-30
Author(s):  
A. O. Ivanov
Keyword(s):  
Productivity Growth ◽  
Labour Productivity ◽  
Production Costs ◽  
Managerial Practices ◽  
Industrial Enterprises ◽  
Labour Productivity Growth ◽  
Period 2 ◽  
Main Factors ◽  
The Moment

The article gives an overview, performs analysis and classification of successful managerial practices applied at Russian industrial enterprises in the framework of the national project “Labour productivity and employment support”. The paper emphasizes the main factors of labour productivity growth as follows: investment policy, growth of human capital, and efficient use of managerial capital of enterprise. In order to determine the need of enterprises to increase labour productivity, the author proposes four universal criteria that signal the existing inefficiency even before the loss of competitiveness: 1) the dynamics of labour productivity in the company is not positive during a given period; 2) the company is behind competitors by labour productivity indicator; 3) the company is behind competitors by labour productivity growth rates indicator for a certain period; 4) unit production costs rise. These criteria allow you to take into account the situation both within the enterprise and in comparison with other enterprises. Each criteria can be considered separately or in combination with the others, applied to enterprises of different industries, specialization, and scale. Criteria indicate the direction of development in which the company is experiencing difficulties at the moment, or may experience them in the future.

scholarly journals Services Sector in Lithuania: Labour Productivity as a Factor of Growth

Ekonomika ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jolanta Žemgulienė
Keyword(s):  
Growth Rate ◽  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Productivity Growth ◽  
Labour Productivity ◽  
Value Added ◽  
Service Industries ◽  
Services Sector ◽  
Labour Productivity Growth ◽  
Empirical Regularities ◽  
The Relationship

This paper examines the tendencies of Lithuanian services sector’s value added and labour productivity during 1995-2006. Comparative analysis of the average annual labour productivity growth in manufacturing and service industries reveals arguments supporting the W. Baumol’s consideration that there can be sporadic productivity increases in nonprogressive sectors. During 1995-2000, labour productivity growth in services exceeded productivity growth in manufacturing. The paper offers an interpretation of the Verdoom law for empirical regularities of the relationship between the cross-sectorial labour productivity growth rate and the value added growth rate.

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