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The UK Productivity “Puzzle” in an International Comparative Perspective

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  • John G. Fernald
  • Robert Inklaar
Abstract
The UK’s slow productivity growth since 2007 has been referred to as a “puzzle”, as if it were a particularly UK-specific challenge. In this paper, we highlight how the United States and northern Europe experienced very similar slowdowns. The common slowdown in productivity growth was a slowdown in total factor productivity (TFP) growth; we find little evidence that capital deepening was an important independent factor. From a conditional-convergence perspective, most of the UK slowdown follows from the slowdown at the U.S. frontier. From the mid-1980s to 2007, the UK’s relative productivity level moved closer to the level of the U.S. and northern Europe, driven by essentially complete convergence in market services TFP. In contrast, manufacturing lost ground relative to the U.S. frontier prior to 2007, and remains far below the frontier. The relative ground lost after 2007 is modest—cumulating to about 4 percentage points—and is largely attributable to somewhat unfavorable industry weights and industry-specific issues in mining, rather than a systematic UK competitiveness problem.

Suggested Citation

  • John G. Fernald & Robert Inklaar, 2022. "The UK Productivity “Puzzle” in an International Comparative Perspective," Working Paper Series 2022-07, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedfwp:94100
    DOI: 10.24148/wp2022-07
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    Cited by:

    1. John Van Reenen & Xuyi Yang, 2024. "Cracking the Productivity Code: An International Comparison of UK Productivity," International Productivity Monitor, Centre for the Study of Living Standards, vol. 46, pages 60-82, Spring.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    productivity growth; Great Recession; convergence;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D24 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Production; Cost; Capital; Capital, Total Factor, and Multifactor Productivity; Capacity
    • E23 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Production
    • E44 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Financial Markets and the Macroeconomy
    • F45 - International Economics - - Macroeconomic Aspects of International Trade and Finance - - - Macroeconomic Issues of Monetary Unions
    • O47 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - Empirical Studies of Economic Growth; Aggregate Productivity; Cross-Country Output Convergence

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