Introduction: Institutions and the Quest for Productivity

Abstract

As the title of this book implies it is accepted that from the years of the Long Boom (1950–73) until recently the productivity performance of the British economy could have been better than it was. The most impressive and comprehensive quantitative account of Britain’s productivity performance has come from Broadberry who has shown that manufacturing productivity was poor during 1950–79 (Broadberry 1997a: 393; 1998). Booth has challenged the idea often made that there was large underperformance in productivity growth in UK manufacturing during the post-War years (Booth 2003).1 Whilst it is widely accepted that many of the industrialised nations would catch up and converge with the GDP per head of the UK, it is not at all clear why many of them should have overtaken the UK on such measures, as countries like France and Germany did after the Second World War. Indeed one of Britain’s most prominent economic historians, Crafts, has said that there remains an ‘unexplained’ shortfall of about 1 per cent per annum in total factor productivity (TFP) growth during the years of the Long Boom (Crafts 2002: 67). Clearly, something needs to be explained.