Accounting for the slowdown in UK innovation and productivity

This paper conducts a comprehensive sources‐of‐growth analysis for the UK market sector, 2000–19, using the latest ONS data, including new estimates of intangible investment, double deflated value‐added, and updated price indices, all constructed bottom‐up from data for 40 industries. The decomposition incorporates contributions from intangible assets, both capitalized and uncapitalized, in national accounts. Our main findings are that first, slowdowns in labour productivity are largest in more intangible‐, knowledge‐, technology‐ and digital‐intensive industries, using numerous definitions. Second, the labour productivity slowdown can be accounted for largely by a slowdown in ‘innovation’, where innovation is shorthand for contributions of intangible capital deepening and TFP growth. We show that: (a) the level of labour productivity in 2019 was 27 log points (31 percentage points) less than had it continued to grow at its 2000–7 rate; (b) reallocation of labour did not contribute to the slowdown; (c) capitalization of the full range of intangibles accounts for 5% of the slowdown; (d) 35% is accounted for by a slowdown in capital deepening (25% tangible, 10% intangible), and 78% by a slowdown in TFP growth; and (e) less than one‐tenth of the TFP slowdown can be accounted for by exceptionally fast growth pre‐crisis.