Investing for prosperity: skills, infrastructure and innovation

Timothy Besley, Miguel Coelho and John van Reenen

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: What policies and institutions are needed to sustain long-run growth in the UK? We describe an optimistic story of the UK economy over the past 30 years. From the late 1970s, the UK reversed a century of relative decline in terms of per capita GDP with our main counterparts in the US, France and Germany. A key factor behind this improvement was an array of policy changes including an expansion of higher education and greater competition in product and labour markets. However, major weaknesses with respect to long-run investment in human capital, infrastructure and innovation remain. These are hampered by problems of short-termism and policy risk. We propose a series of radical reforms to address these problems: such as more flexibility in schooling with a new focus on disadvantage; a new architecture for national infrastructure decisions and more competition in banking.

Keywords: investment; policy risk; productivity; UK economy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O20 O52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (26)

Published in National Institute Economic Review, 2013, 224(1), pp. R1-R13. ISSN: 0027-9501

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Related works:
Journal Article: Investing for Prosperity: Skills, Infrastructure and Innovation (2013)
Journal Article: Investing for Prosperity: Skills, Infrastructure and Innovation (2013)
Working Paper: Investing for Prosperity: Skills, Infrastructure and Innovation (2013)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:50306

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