De-professionalism, identity and the productivity debate: A research puzzle?

Abstract

In a recent letter to the Financial Times a group of left-leaning economists said that the Labour Party’s radical manifesto is justified by ‘Britain’s array of structural problems, including a lost decade for productivity growth, a dearth of investment and the gulf between London and the south-east and the rest of the country’ (Blanchflower and others, 2019). Given that the newly elected Conservative Government espouses the language of easing austerity, a key research question for social policy might be