John van Reenen
speaker
54 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2012
last heard May 2013
John van Reenen’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
One explanation is that numbers are wrong, that simply that GDP is much higher than we think it is.
I don't think that's very plausible because the revisions historically that we see for GDP are relatively small.
So it's unlikely that GDP will be revised so much it's going to resolve the productivity puzzle.
The second explanation is that what's happened is that although the total number of employees has increased or recovered to what it was before the recession...
The amount of hours hasn't.
There's almost self-employed people, part-time employed people.
So when you take that into account, productivity hasn't fallen so badly.
However, even when you look at GDP per hour, that has also performed poorly.
So I don't think that's the full explanation either.
The most plausible explanation for what's happened is people's real wages have fallen very dramatically in this recession, much more so than they did in previous recessions.
So what that means is that because people's wages have fallen, it's cheaper for firms to employ them.
So because of that, you see more employment.
You also see a fall of capital relative to workers.
And this means that productivity falls because there's less capital intensity and there's lower wages.
But there's a wider thing, which is actually more of a concern that what is a good piece of research but doesn't reveal something terribly wrong with the mental health of those who served in our forces.
isn't a story.
Sorry, can I just... It was news gathering.
Just one second.
This might be them again.
Just one second.
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