Is the UK Productivity Slowdown Unprecedented?

Nicholas Crafts and Terence C. Mills
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Terence C. Mills: Loughborough University

The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) from University of Warwick, Department of Economics

Abstract: We estimate trend UK labour productivity grow thusing a Hodrick-Prescott filter method. We use the results to compare downturns where the economy fell below its pre-existing trend. We find that the current productivity slowdown has resulted in productivity being 19.7% below the pre-2008 trend path in 2018. This is nearly double the previous worst productivity short fall ten years after the start of a downturn. On this criterion the slow down is unprecedented in the last 250 years. We conjecture that this reflects a combination of adverse circumstances, namely, a financial crisis, a weakening impact of ICT and impending Brexit.

Keywords: Brexit; financial crisis; Hodrick-Prescott filter; ICT; productivity slowdown (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C22 N13 N14 O47 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/research/w ... werp_1215_crafts.pdf

Related works:
Journal Article: IS THE UK PRODUCTIVITY SLOWDOWN UNPRECEDENTED? (2020)
Working Paper: Is the UK Productivity Slowdown Unprecedented? (2019)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wrk:warwec:1215

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