Category: productivity

The Government should hold the line on public sector pay

The independent pay review bodies are reportedly set to recommend pay increases of around 3pc for NHS staff and 4pc for teachers. However, the Government has only budgeted for a 2.8pc increase for public sector workers. This is broadly in line with expected price rises over the coming year, but still higher than the Bank … Continue reading The Government should hold the line on public sector pay →

Classical Liberal solutions to the productivity puzzle

Here are the slides from a presentation I gave at the IEA today on the slowdown in productivity growth in the UK and other major economies since the Global Financial Crisis of 2008 - aka the 'productivity puzzle'. It concludes with some proposed solutions in the Classical Liberal tradition... Classical Liberal solutions to the productivity … Continue reading Classical Liberal solutions to the productivity puzzle →

The real ‘black hole’ is in public sector productivity

The Nobel Prize-winning economist, Paul Krugman, once famously said that “productivity isn’t everything, but in the long run it is almost everything”. If so, the UK has a huge problem – and that problem is particularly acute in the public sector. Official estimates released last week suggest that public service productivity was an astonishing 8.5 … Continue reading The real ‘black hole’ is in public sector productivity →