National Productivity Week 27th November 2023 | Visit Website

A diverse community of
leading experts, policymakers
and practitioners

The Institute’s key research themes
are led by ten academic partners
spread across the UK.

Businesses are crucial to solving
the UK’s productivity problems.

Investment in Places Research Project

We’re a UK-wide research
organisation exploring what
productivity means for business

Contact us

Businesses are crucial to solving
the UK’s productivity problems.

Research

Geography & Place

Geography & Place

The low productivity levels of some regions or areas of the UK, and the consequent disparities in income and broader wellbeing, are widely documented. There are lessons to be learned concerning the effectiveness of local economic development strategies, infrastructure investment, land use and housing policy, educational and social interventions, and their interactions.

Theme lead

Professor Philip McCann

Co-Investigators

Professor Anthony Venables
Professor Anthony Rafferty

Collaborators

Dr Patricia Rice
Assistant Professor Steven Bond-Smith
Miriam Fritzsche
Professor Nikolaus Wolf
Ana Rincon-Aznar (when at NIESR)

Tackling the UK’s regional economic inequality: binding constraints and avenues for policy intervention

Presenting five stylised facts about the defining features of the UK's regional economic equality problem, which is best characterised by productivity differentials between London and the greater South East versus the rest.

Commercial real estate

Capital Shocks and UK Regional Divergence

Using uniquely-detailed large-scale commercial real estate investment data to examine how financial markets perceived the attractiveness of investing in UK regions during the last two decades, providing a new explanation to UK regional productivity gaps.

Yellow staircase going up

Levelling-up economics

Detailing how until recently, mainstream UK economic thinking failed to pay attention and concern to UK interregional productivity inequalities.