Is the UK’s recent productivity recovery a sign of lasting improvement? How could AI, technology adoption and shifting global economic conditions shape the country’s future productivity?

This episode of Productivity Puzzles explores the challenges facing the UK economy, from weak technology diffusion and widening gaps between firms to trade, competitiveness and the priorities needed to support long-term productivity growth.

Host Professor Bart van Ark is joined by:

• Professor Jun Du, TPI Managing Director and Professor of Economics at Alliance Manchester Business School

For more information on the topic:

• Bart's farewell blog: https://www.productivity.ac.uk/news/productivity-place-and-the-power-of-alignment-reflections-on-six-years-at-tpi/
• Jun's introductory blog: Productivity when nothing stands still - The Productivity Institute
• Jun Du, Look inside, look around, look beyond: Look inside, look around, look beyond: From productivity gaps to adaptive capacity - The Productivity Institute
• Jun Du, The options are familiar. The world around them is not: The options are familiar. The world around them is not. - The Productivity Institute
• Bart & Dirk's pro-productivity policy book/project: Pro-Productivity Policies - The Productivity Institute
• Bart's recent frontier/diffusion paper: Rewiring Europe’s Productivity Framework: Aligning Investment, Innovation, and Diffusion - The Productivity Institute
• The Manchesterism publication: The Manchester Model: what foreign inward investment reveals about the UK’s most productive city outside London - The Productivity Institute
• Link to the ONS paper: Measuring labour productivity: our new approach | National Statistical

About Productivity Puzzles:

Productivity Puzzles is brought to you by The Productivity Institute, a research body involving nine academic institutions across the UK, nine Productivity Forums throughout the nation, and a national independent Productivity Commission to advise policy makers at all levels of government. It is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council.

Generative AI has moved from curiosity to everyday tool with remarkable speed. But the big productivity question is not simply whether people are using it; it is whether firms, sectors and economies can turn that use into lasting productivity gains.

This episode of Productivity Puzzles explores the challenges and opportunities that Generative AI presents, centring on a new article just published in the International Productivity Monitor, the joint journal of the Centre for the Study of Living Standards and The Productivity Institute.

Host Professor Bart van Ark is joined by:

• Martin Baily, Senior Fellow Emeritus at the Brookings Institution
• Diane Coyle, Bennett Professor of Public Policy and Research Director, Bennett School of Public Policy, University of Cambridge

For more information on the topic:

• Martin Neil Baily, David M. Byrne, Aidan T. Kane and Paul E. Soto, The Potential for Sustained Productivity Impetus from GenAI, International Productivity Monitor, Issue 50, pp 5-26.
• Martin Neil Baily, 2023. "Lessons from a Career in Productivity Research: Some Answers, A Glimpse of the Future, and Much Left to Learn," International Productivity Monitor, Issue 44, pages 120-149, Fall.
• Productivity Puzzles Podcast: Ask the expert on… what is productivity?
• Tera Allas, AI and productivity: the ladder of leakage, Substack.
• Carol Corrado, Jonathan Haskel, Cecilia Jona-Lasinio, Artificial intelligence and productivity: an intangible assets approach, Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Volume 37, Issue 3, Autumn 2021, Pages 435–458
• Zvi Griliches, Hybrid Corn: An Exploration in the Economics of Technological Change. Econometrica, October 1957, 25(4), pp. 501-22.

About Productivity Puzzles:

Productivity Puzzles is brought to you by The Productivity Institute, a research body involving nine academic institutions across the UK, nine Productivity Forums throughout the nation, and a national independent Productivity Commission to advise policy makers at all levels of government. It is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council.

Why do firms invest when they do and not necessarily when they should? Are firms too cautious to invest? Or just realistic about uncertainty? Is the real investment gap about money or about mindset?

This episode of Productivity Puzzles explores why the UK has invested less than its peers, drawing on two brand-new studies from The Productivity Institute: one looking at how firms invest, the other at how managers think.

Host Professor Bart van Ark is joined by:

• Tera Allas, Honorary Professor at Alliance Manchester Business School, Chair Advisory Board, at The Productivity Institute.
• Stephen Roper, Professor of Enterprise at Warwick Business School, founding Director of the Enterprise Research Centre, Co-Director of the Innovation Research Caucus, and Research Programme Lead on “Firms in Transitions” at The Productivity Institute.
• Catherine Mann, Honorary Professor at Alliance Manchester Business School, External Member of the Monetary Policy Committee at the Bank of England, Programme Lead on “Finance and Investment” at The Productivity Institute.

For more information on the topic:

E. Golubova, S. Roper (2026) Understanding productive investment decisions: Investment patterns and decision-making processes, The Productivity Institute and Enterprise Research Centre.

T. Allas, S. Roper (2026) Ambitious but risk averse: UK manager attitudes and the investment gap, The Productivity Institute.

C. Mann (2026) Finance, Investment, and Productivity: Distillation and Synthesis of TPI Research Programme on Finance. Productivity Insights Paper No. 085, The Productivity Institute.

T. Allas, D. Zenghelis (2025) The UK’s capital gap: a short-fall in the trillions of pounds that will take decades to bridge. Productivity Insights Paper No. 055, The Productivity Institute.

C. Mann (2024) UK Business Investment: Economists, Managers, Financiers. An Integrated Framework to Analyse the Past and Underpin Prospects. Productivity Insights Paper No. 036, The Productivity Institute.

Productivity Puzzles podcast, Business Dynamism: is turbulence good for productivity?, The Productivity Institute.

Y. Xue, C. Mann (2026) Cost of Capital and Investment: Evidence from the UK. Working Paper No. 072, The Productivity Institute

S. Roper, R. Owen (2026) The early-stage, equity-finance journey of potential high-growth companies in the UK, Department for Business and Trade.

About Productivity Puzzles:

Productivity Puzzles is brought to you by The Productivity Institute, a research body involving nine academic institutions across the UK, nine Productivity Forums throughout the nation, and a national independent Productivity Commission to advise policy makers at all levels of government. It is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council.