How can policy boost productivity growth?

Please note that this event is now fully booked. To join the waiting list in case of drop-outs, please sign up here.

The UK's productivity growth is anemic. Since 2007 output per hour worked has grown by just 0.5% a year. If it had grown in line with its pre-crisis trend, income per capita would be around 25% higher today.

Boosting productivity growth is a core aim of the British government, and key to ensuring rising living standards and to funding public services. But what can the government actually do to get the economy growing?

At this in-person policy conference, four panels and a keynote speaker (Jonathan Haskel) will give expert perspectives on four key areas of the UK’s productivity problems and discuss levers the new government could pull to boost growth.  

The panels will cover:

• Skills: Education and training are key to ensuring a productive workforce and to providing good jobs. What does the current distribution of skills across the UK workforce look like? What can we do to make sure we’re equipping people across the country with the right set of skills to be productive in a modern economy and to experience good pay and pay progression? How are differences across areas driven by differences in educational attainment and by graduates moving to where the jobs are?  
• Tax: The tax system plays a crucial role in shaping incentives across a range of economic decisions, from entrepreneurship and investment to location choices and risk-taking. How does the current design of our tax system hold people back from making decisions that could lead to higher productivity growth? And what would a tax system better geared towards growth look like?
• Health and an ageing population:  A key way of dealing with the costs of an ageing population is for people to delay retirement and work for longer. Despite successes between the mid 1990s and the pandemic, progress has stalled, and there is increasing concern about how health at older ages limits people’s capacity to work.  How concerned should we be and what options are open to government?
• Housing: The UK’s housing stock is unusually expensive, cramped and poor quality compared to many of our neighbours. In addition supply does not closely track changes in demand, limiting workers access to jobs in the most productive and dynamic cities. How responsive is the UK housing market to demand? And what can be done to make sure housing is made available where it is needed to boost growth?  

Confirmed speakers include:

Richard Blundell (UCL and IFS), Paul Cheshire (LSE), Anna Clarke (The Housing Forum) , Jonathan Cribb (IFS), Richard Davies (LSE), Isaac Delestre (IFS), Catherine Foot (Phoenix Insights), Irem Guceri (Oxford), Jonathan Haskel (Imperial College Business School), Heidi Karjalainen (IFS), Peter Levell (IFS), Sandra McNally (Surrey), Helen Miller (IFS), Anna Vignoles (Leverhulme Trust), Xiaowei Xu (IFS).

This conference will take place in-person only, although the panel sessions will be available to watch back afterwards for those who can't make it in person.