Documents Fulop, Gabor 3 results

"The United Kingdom is preparing a modern industrial strategy to boost labour productivity across the whole country and to narrow regional gaps in living standards. This raises the question of the optimal allocation of scarce resources in meeting these targets. This study identifies industrial strengths of each region and scope to boost regional productivity through the channel of higher capital intensity. Overall regional investment ratios appear weakly linked to regional productivity, but the sectoral composition of regions and their type of investment are more important determinants. Each region has productivity leaders, but the concentration of such firms is the highest in the south of England. Differences in the representation of the most productive firms in regions are strongly related to differences in regional productivity. The empirical methodology quantifies the productivity effects of raising the capital intensity in each sector-region, focusing on viable firms falling behind the national productivity frontier in all but the finance and insurance sectors over 1995-2014. To enhance labour productivity of lagging regions, the industrial strategy should promote the catch up of firms with the national best performers in services sectors, in particular knowledge intensive services such as ICT and business services, but also wholesale and retail trade. This finding is consistent with the UK's leading global position in high value-added services sectors. The type of investment matters: boosting research and development in the manufacturing sector in some lagging regions would also be effective in stimulating productivity. Manufacturing investment cannot be a substitute to investment in services given the small size of the manufacturing sector and its high exposure to competition from rapidly emerging global hubs. However, this study does not quantify the effects of skills, the benefits of greater industrial diversification and the positive impact that larger cities would have on agglomeration effects."

"Since the start of the Great Recession, labour productivity growth has been weak in the United Kingdom, weaker than in many other OECD countries. The productivity shortfall, defined as the gap between actual productivity and the level implied by its pre-crisis trend growth rate, was nearly 20% for output per hour at the end of 2016. This study assesses the UK productivity puzzle and discusses its possible determinants at the sectoral level. Most of the UK productivity underperformance is structural rather than cyclical. Half of the productivity shortfall is explained by non-financial services (with information and communication being the largest contributor), a fourth by financial services, and another fourth by manufacturing, other production and construction. All but non-financial services and the construction sectors contribute disproportionately to the productivity shortfall compared to their shares in overall output and hours worked of the UK economy. In non-financial services, large increases in self-employed with no employees, reduced matching of skills to jobs and a lower capital-output ratio may have been a drag on productivity. Stagnant productivity in the financial sector is mainly linked to reduced risk-taking and leverage, as reflected by declining total factor productivity following its steep increases in the run-up to the crisis. Greater substitution of labour for capital and weak corporate restructuring have both held back productivity improvements in the manufacturing sector. Some causes of the productivity puzzle pre-date the crisis, including low tangible investment, too rapid expansion of financial services, weak innovation in the manufacturing sector, and a secular decline of oil and gas industries. This Working Paper relates to the 2018 OECD Economic Survey of the United-Kingdom (www.oecd.org/eco/surveys/economic-survey-united-kingdom.htm)."

"Using cross-country time series panel regressions for the last two decades, this paper seeks to identify the main policy and institutional factors that explain the share of self-employment across European countries. It looks at the aggregate share of self-employed as well as its breakdown by age, skill and gender. The generosity of unemployment benefits, and to a lesser extent, spending on active labour market policies appear to be robust determinants of the long-term share of self-employed in European countries. No significant relation is found between the stringency of employment protection and aggregate self-employment. However, there are significant, and oppositely signed, impacts on high- and low-skilled self-employed separately. Both the tax wedge and the minimum wage appear to be positively related to the share of self-employed in the long term, but the relation holds for some categories of workers only."