The UK productivity puzzle: a survey of the literature and expert views

Abstract

Since 2008, the UK’s productivity has stagnated, leading to the widely debated “productivity puzzle”. Understanding this phenomenon and its drivers is crucial for managers and policymakers. This article summarises theoretical and empirical literature on the determinants of productivity in general terms, as well as their relevance to the UK’s productivity performance. It also discusses to what extent the findings from a survey of leading UK academic experts on productivity provide support for the existing theoretical and empirical evidence on this topic, and help identify and validate the most important factors explaining the UK’s productivity slowdown since 2008. The combination of our literature review and survey findings suggests that key determinants of the UK’s productivity slowdown include: insufficient investment; insufficient quality of infrastructure; limitations in human capital stock; and management quality issues.

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Item Type:	Article
Authors/Creators:	Williams, S. Glass, A.J. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5984-7666 Matos, M. Elder, T. Arnett, D.
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information:	© 2024 The Authors. Except as otherwise noted, this author-accepted version of a journal article published in International Journal of the Economics of Business is made available via the University of Sheffield Research Publications and Copyright Policy under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.
Keywords:	UK productivity; literature review; questionnaire of experts; management quality; regional and sector inequality; future productivity outlooks
Dates:	Published: 2 January 2025 Published (online): 2 July 2024 Accepted: 10 June 2024 Submitted: 4 December 2024
Institution:	The University of Sheffield
Academic Units:	The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > Management School (Sheffield)
Depositing User:	Symplectic Sheffield
Date Deposited:	23 Jul 2024 13:26
Last Modified:	12 Mar 2025 15:43
Status:	Published
Publisher:	Informa UK Limited
Refereed:	Yes
Identification Number:	10.1080/13571516.2024.2367818
Related URLs:	Author
Sustainable Development Goals:
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID):	oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:215092

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The UK productivity puzzle: a survey of the literature and expert views

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