In various blogs, we’ve looked at the UK’s low productivity growth, both relative to other countries and relative to the pre-1998 financial crisis (see, for example, The UK productivity puzzle and Productivity should we be optimistic?). Productivity is what drives long-term economic growth as it determines potential GDP. If long-term growth is seen as desirable, then a fall in productivity represents a serious economic problem.
Recent data suggest that the problem, if anything, is worse than previously thought and does not seem to be getting better. Productivity is now some 21% below what it would have been had productivity growth continued at the rate experienced in the years before the financial crisis (see second chart below).
In its latest productivity statistics, the ONS reports that labour productivity (in terms of output per hour worked) fell by 0.1% in the second quarter of 2017. This follows a fall of 0.5% in quarter 1. Over the whole year to 2017 Q2, productivity fell by 0.3%.
Most other major developed countries have much higher productivity than the UK. In 2016, Italy’s productivity was 9.9% higher than the UK’s; the USA’s was 27.9%, France’s was 28.7% and Germany’s was 34.5% higher. What is more, their productivity has grown faster (see chart).
But what of the future? The Office for Budget responsibility publishes forecasts for productivity growth, but has consistently overestimated it. After predicting several times in the past that UK productivity growth would rise towards its pre-financial crisis trend of around 2% per year, in its October 2017 Forecast evaluation Report it recognises that this was too optimisitic and revises downwards its forecasts for productivity growth for 2017 and beyond.
As the period of historically weak productivity growth lengthens, it seems less plausible to assume that potential and actual productivity growth will recover over the medium term to the extent assumed in our most recent forecasts. Over the past five years, growth in output per hour has averaged 0.2 per cent. This looks set to be a better guide to productivity growth in 2017 than our March forecast of 1.6 per cent.
Looking further ahead, it no longer seems central to assume that productivity growth will recover to the 1.8 per cent we assumed in March 2017 within five years.
But why has productivity growth not returned to pre-crisis levels? There are five possible explanations.
The first is that there has been labour hoarding. But with companies hiring more workers, this is unlikely still to be true for most employers.
The second is that very low interest rates have allowed some low-productivity companies to survive, which might otherwise have been driven out of business.
The third is a reluctance of banks to lend for investment. After the financial crisis this was driven by the need for them to repair their balance sheets. Today, it may simply be greater risk aversion than before the financial crisis, especially with the uncertainties surrounding Brexit.
The fourth is a fall in firms’ desire to invest. Although investment has recovered somewhat from the years directly following the financial crisis, it is still lower than might be expected in an economy that is no longer is recession. Indeed, there has been a much slower investment recovery than occurred after previous recessions.
The fifth is greater flexibility in the labour market, which has subdued wages and has allowed firms to respond to higher demand by taking on more relatively low-productivity workers rather than having to invest in human capital or technology.
Whatever the explanation, the solution is for more investment in both technology and in physical and human capital, whether by the private or the public sector. The question is how to stimulate such investment.
Articles
UK productivity lagging well behind G7 peers – ONS Financial Times, Katie Martin (6/10/17)
UK productivity sees further fall BBC News (6/10/17)
UK resigned to endless productivity gloom The Telegraph, Tim Wallace (10/10/17)
UK productivity estimates must be ‘significantly’ lowered, admits OBR The Guardian, Richard Partington and Phillip Inman (10/10/17)
UK productivity growth to remain sluggish, says OBR BBC News (10/10/17)
Official Treasury forecaster slashes UK productivity growth forecast, signalling hole in public finances for November Budget Independent, Ben Chu (10/10/17)
The Guardian view on Britain’s productive forces: they are not working The Guardian, Editorial (10/10/17)
Mind the productivity gap: the story behind sluggish earnings The Telegraph, Anna Isaac (26/10/17)
Data and statistical analysis
Labour productivity: April to June 2017 ONS Statistical Bulletin (6/10/17)
International comparisons of productivity ONS Dataset (6/10/17)
Forecast evaluation report OBR (October 2017)
Questions
- Explain the relationship between labour productivity and potential GDP.
- What is the relationship between actual growth in GDP and labour productivity?
- Why does the UK lag France and Germany more in output per hour than in output per worker, but the USA more in output per worker than in output per hour?
- Is there anything about the UK system of financing investment that results in lower investment than in other developed countries?
- Why are firms reluctant to invest?
- In what ways could public investment increase productivity?
- What measures would you recommend to encourage greater investment and why?
- How do expectations affect the growth in labour productivity?
Together with Formula 1, tennis is the other sport I love – and my favourite player by far is Rafa!
We often apply game theory to various sports and consider how players, teams and individuals can think strategically. One of the big debates in tennis is ‘who is the best ever’ and I argue that Nadal is the greatest, based on a huge range of metrics.
I saw this article in the Economist, providing analysis and comparison between some of the best tennis players. It shows how we can use economic thinking, probability, game theory and analysis to come to something of an answer about who is the greatest, considering the various players’ runs to the title in the Grand Slams. Of course the reason I’m posting this is because according to the Economist, Rafa is the best! And the reasoning is very sound. Enjoy. I certainly did.
Sorry Roger: Rafael Nadal is not just the King of Clay The Economist (13/09/17)
Questions
- What is game theory and why is it useful?
- How does the rating system aim to measure the skill of a tennis champion?
- In this particular scenario, why is it important to use probabilities?
- We can use game theory to think about penalty shoot outs and whether footballers play to the Nash equilibrium. Can we also use the Nash equilibrium when thinking about tennis? (Think about the serve!)
An economy that becomes dependent on credit can, in turn, become acutely volatile. Too much credit and there exists the potential for financial distress which can result in an economic slowdown as people cut back on spending. Too little credit and the growth in aggregate demand is subdued. Some argue that this is what now faces a financialised economy like the UK. Even it this overstates the significance of credit, there is no doubt that UK credit data is keenly followed by economists and policymakers.
Recent rates of credit accumulation by individuals have raised concern. In July 2014 the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) of the Bank of England issued a statement voicing its concern that the growth in consumer credit, also known as unsecured lending, was stretching the financial well-being of individuals and that the resilience of lenders’ consumer credit portfolios was therefore reducing.
Chart 1 illustrates the scale of the flows of both consumer credit (unsecured lending) and mortgages (secured credit) from banks and building societies to individuals. It shows the amount of credit net of repayments lent over the last 12 months. In the 12 months to July 2017 the net accumulation of consumer credit was £18.2 billion while that of secured borrowing was £40.8 billion. Although the 12-month level of consumer credit accumulation was down from its recent peak of £19.2 billion in November 2016, total net lending (including secured lending) to individuals of £59.0 billion was its highest since September 2008. (Click here to download a PowerPoint of the chart).
To help put in context the size of flows of net lending Chart 2 shows the annual flows of consumer credit and secured debt as percentages of GDP. In this case each observation measures net lending over the past four quarters as a percentage of annual GDP. The latest observation is for 2017 Q2 and shows that the annual net flow of consumer credit was equivalent to 0.94 per cent of GDP while that for secured borrowing was 1.78 per cent of GDP. While the flows of consumer credit and secured borrowing as shares of national income have eased a little from their values in the second half of last year, they have not eased significantly. (Click here to download a PowerPoint of the chart).
Despite the recent strength of borrowing, levels are nothing like those seen in the mid 2000s. Nonetheless, we need to see the current accumulation of debt in the context of two important factors: debt already accumulated and the future macroeconomic environment. Chart 3 gives some insight to the first of these two by looking at stocks of debt outstanding as shares of GDP. The total debt-to-GDP ratio peaked 90 percent in 2009 before relatively slower growth in credit accumulation saw the ratio fall back. The ratio has now been at or around the 78 per cent level consistently for the past two or so years. (Click here to download a PowerPoint of the chart).
The ratio of the stock of consumer debt to GDP peaked in 2008 at 13.3 per cent. It too fell back reaching 9.05 per cent in the middle of 2014. Since that time the ratio has been rising and by the end of the second quarter of this year was 10.1 per cent. The PRA appears not only to be concerned by this but also the likely unwinding of what it describes as the ‘current benign macroeconomic environment and historically low arrears rates’.
Going forward, we might expect to see ever closer scrutiny not only of the aggregate indicators referred to here but of an array of credit indicators. The PRA statement, for example, refers to the number of , ‘0% interest credit card offers’, falling interest rates on unsecured personal loans and the growth of motor finance loans. The hope is that we can avoid the costs of financial distress that so starkly affected the economy in the late 2000s and that continue to cast a shadow over today’s economic prospects.
PRA Statement
PRA Statement on Consumer Credit PRA, Bank of England (4/7/14)
Articles
Bank of England demands consumer credit vigilance; construction growth slows – as it happened Guardian (4/7/14)
Bank of England warns more defences may be needed against consumer credit Telegraph (24/7/17)
Beware the bubble: Bank of England clamps down on credit Telegraph, Tim Wallace (1/7/17)
Bank of England raises capital requirements on UK lenders amid concerns about excessive consumer borrowing Independent, Ben Chu (27/6/17)
Bank of England tightens mortgage borrowing rules amid fears of debt boom Express, Lana Clements (27/6/17)
Rise in personal loans dangerous, Bank of England official says BBC News (25/7/17)
Bank of England takes action over bad loans BBC News (27/6/17)
Data
Bankstats (Monetary and Financial Statistics) – Latest Tables Bank of England
Statistical Interactive Database Bank of England
Questions
- What does it mean if people are financially distressed? What responses might people take in response to this distress?
- How can financial distress affect the economy’s growth path?
- How would you measure the financial well-being of an individual? What about the financial well-being of firms?
- What role mights banks play in affecting levels of financial distress in the economy?
- What does it mean if credit conditions are pro-cyclical?
- Why might banks’ lending be pro-cyclical?
- Are there measures that policymakers can take to reduce the likelihood that flows of credit become too excessive?
- Why do some economists refer to the economic downturn of the late 2000s as a balance sheet recession? How likely is another balance sheet recession in the short term? What about in the longer term?
With first Houston, then several Caribbean islands and Florida suffering dreadful flooding and destruction from Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, many are questioning whether more should be spent on flood prevention and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Economists would normally argue that such questions are answered by conducting a cost–benefit analysis.
However, even if the size of the costs and benefits of such policies could be measured, this would not be enough to give the answer. Whether such spending is justified would depend on the social rate of discount. But what the rate should be in cost-benefit analyses is a highly contested issue, especially when the benefits occur a long time in the future.
I you ask the question today, ‘should more have been spent on flood prevention in Houston and Miami?’, the answer would almost certainly be yes, even if the decision had to have been taken many years ago, given the time it takes to plan and construct such defences. 
But if you asked people, say, 15 years ago whether such expenditure should be undertaken, many would have said no, given that the protection would be provided quite a long time in the future. Also many people back then would doubt that the defences would be necessary and many would not be planning to live there indefinitely.
This is the familiar problem of people valuing costs and benefits in the future less than costs and benefits occurring today. To account for this, costs and benefits in the future are discounted by an annual rate to reduce them to a present value.
But with costs and benefits occurring a long time in the future, especially from measures to reduce carbon emissions, the present value is very sensitive to the rate of discount chosen. But choosing the rate of discount is fraught with difficulties.
Some argue that a social rate of discount should be similar to long-term market rates. But market rates reflect only the current generation’s private preferences. They do not reflect the costs and benefits to future generations. A social rate of discount that did take their interests into account would be much lower and could even be argued to be zero – or negative with a growing population.
Against this, however, has to be set the possibility that future generations will be richer than the current one and will therefore value a dollar (or any other currency) less than today’s generation.
However, it is also likely, if the trend of recent decades is to continue, that economic growth will be largely confined to the rich and that the poor will be little better off, if at all. And it is the poor who often suffer the most from natural disasters. Just look, for example, at the much higher personal devastation suffered from hurricane Irma by the poor on many Caribbean islands compared with those in comparatively wealthy Florida.
A low or zero discount rate would make many environmental projects socially profitable, even though they would not be with a higher rate. The choice of rate is thus crucial to the welfare of future generations who are likely to bear the brunt of climate change.
But just how should the social rate of discount be chosen? The following two articles explore the issue.
Articles
How Much Is the Future Worth? Slate, Will Oremus (1/9/17)
Climate changes the debate: The impact of demographics on long-term discount rates Vox, Eli P Fenichel, Matthew Kotchen and Ethan T Addicott (20/8/17)
Questions
- What is meant by the social rate of discount?
- Why does the choice of a lower rate of social discount imply a more aggressive climate policy?
- How is the distribution of the benefits and costs of measures to reduce carbon emissions between rich and poor relevant in choosing the social rate of discount of such measures?
- How is the distribution of the benefits of such measures between current and future generations relevant in choosing the rate?
- How is uncertainty about the magnitude of the costs and benefits relevant in choosing the rate?
- What is the difference between Stern’s and Nordhaus’ analyses of the choice of social discount rate?
- Explain and discuss the ‘mortality-based approach’ to estimating social discount rates.
- What are the arguments ‘for economists analysing climate change through the lens of minimising risk, rather than maximizing utility’?
According to a new report, Time for Change published by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), ‘The British economic model needs fundamental reform.’
It is no longer generating rising earnings for a majority of the population, and young people today are set to be poorer than their parents. Beneath its headlines figures, the economy is suffering from deep and longstanding weaknesses, which make it unfit to face the challenges of the 2020s.
The report by the IPPR’s Commission on Economic Justice is an interim one, with the final report due in the latter part of next year. The commission was set up in 2016 and includes business leaders, such as the heads of John Lewis and Siemens, the TUC General Secretary, the Archbishop of Canterbury and other leading figures.
Commenting on the interim report, Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury said
Our economic model is broken. Britain stands at a watershed moment where we need to make fundamental choices about the sort of economy we need. We are failing those who will grow up into a world where the gap between the richest and poorest parts of the country is significant and destabilising
The report found that wages have stagnated for the majority of the population since the financial crisis of 2007/8. Wage income has fallen as a proportion of national income, while the proportions going to income from profits and property have risen. Young people are poorer than previous generations of young people.
Despite low unemployment, many people are on zero-hour contracts, part-time contracts or employed on a casual basis. For many, their jobs are insecure and they have no bargaining power.
The UK for many years has had a lower rate of investment that other developed economies and productivity, in terms of output per hour, is the lowest of its major competitors. Productivity in Germany is 36% higher than in the UK; in France and the USA it is 29% higher. Although there are some internationally competitive UK firms with high productivity, the country has:
a longer ‘tail’ of low-productivity businesses, in which weak management and poor use of skills leads to ‘bad jobs’ and low wages.
There are many other challenges, including an ageing population, uncertainties from Brexit, a large current account deficit, increased competition from abroad and growth once more in private-sector debt, which means that consumption may cease to be the main driver of economic growth as people seek to curb their borrowing.
The report is also critical of fiscal policy, which with record low interest rates could have been used to finance infrastructure projects as well as supporting public services.
The report recommends three approaches:
The first is institutional reform to support investment.
The second is making the economy more competitive through a coherent industrial strategy, reform of the financial sector to support long-term investment, reform of corporate governance to promote business success and tackling the market dominance of companies such as Amazon and Google.
The third is to bring greater social justice and equality through encouraging more secure and better-paid jobs, strengthening trades unions and reforming the tax system to make it fairer and smarter.
Not surprisingly the government has defended its record of reducing debt, presiding over falling unemployment and reduced inequality as measured by a reduced Gini coefficient. However, there has only been a modest fall in the Gini coefficient, from 0.333 in 2009/10 to 0.315 in 2016/7, and this has largely been the result of the very rich seeing a decline in income from assets.
Articles
Britain’s economy is broken and failing to tackle inequality, says major new report Independent, Ben Chu (6/9/17)
UK’s economic model is broken, says Archbishop of Canterbury The Guardian, Phillip Inman (5/9/17)
Tax wealth or see the UK tear itself apart, Cable will warn Bloomberg, Alex Morales and Thomas Penny (6/9/17)
Archbishop of Canterbury calls for radical economic reform BBC News (5/9/17)
Archbishop warns economy is “broken” as report reveals longest period of wage stagnation for 150 years Huffington Post, Rachel Wearmouth (6/9/17)
Britain’s economy is broken. We desperately need new ideas The Guardian, Tom Kibasi (4/6/17)
Carney: Britain is in the ‘first lost decade since the 1860s’, Business Insider, Oscar Williams-Grut (6/12/16)
Our broken economy, in one simple chart New York Times, David Leonhardt (7/8/16)
Report
Time for Change: A new Vision for the British Economy IPPR Commission on Economic Justice (6/9/17)
Questions
- Why have wages for the majority of the UK population stagnated for the past 10 years?
- Why is productivity in the UK lower than in most other developed economies?
- Is it possible for poor people to become poorer and yet for the Gini coefficient to fall?
- What institutional reforms would you suggest to encourage greater investment?
- Explain the possible advantages and disadvantages of abandoning ‘austerity policy’ and adopting a more expansionist fiscal stance?
- Does it matter that Amazon and Google are dominant players in their respective markets? Explain.
In various blogs, we’ve looked at the UK’s low productivity growth, both relative to other countries and relative to the pre-1998 financial crisis (see, for example, The UK productivity puzzle and Productivity should we be optimistic?). Productivity is what drives long-term economic growth as it determines potential GDP. If long-term growth is seen as desirable, then a fall in productivity represents a serious economic problem.
