Government policy and business productivity: does it help or harm?

Productivity Puzzles

What is the best thing government can do to help improve business productivity? Provide more business support? Create better conditions for doing business? Or simply, get out of the way. In other words, can government policy and business growth ever become a happy marriage?

Host Professor Bart van Ark is joined by a co-host:

• Stephen Roper, Professor of Enterprise at Warwick Business School, founding Director of the Enterprise Research Centre, Co-Director of the Innovation Research Caucus, and Research Programme Lead on “Firms in Transitions” at The Productivity Institute.

Bart and Rebecca are joined by two guest speakers:

• Jane Galsworthy, Managing Director of Oxford Innovation Advice and Steering Group Chair at the Enterprise Research Centre.
• Tera Allas, Director of Research and Economics at McKinsey & Company, UK, and Chair of the Advisory Committee at The Productivity Institute.

For more information on the topic:

• The Productivity Institute (2023), The Productivity Agenda.
• The Productivity Institute, Business Dynamism: is turbulence good for productivity?, Productivity Puzzles Podcast, March 2024
• The Productivity Institute, Should we be worried about business dynamism?, blog.
• Enterprise Research Centre (2024) The State of Small Business Britain 2023.

About Productivity Puzzles:

Productivity Puzzles is brought to you by The Productivity Institute, a research body involving nine academic institutions across the UK, eight Regional Productivity Forums throughout the nation, and a national independent Productivity Commission to advise policy makers at all levels of government. It is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council.