Category: Uncategorized

A 32 hour workweek – When?

Readers will know we’ve been banging on about employees needing to work less hours per week yet produce more outputs and better outcomes – and be rewarded better. Indeed, way back in 1930, the world’s most important economist, John Maynard Keynes, predicted that within 100 years most people would be working no more than 15 …

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Low-paid migrants are no answer to labor shortages

The Wall Street Journal reports on a speech to Boris Johnson’s supporters where the U.K. prime minister talks of a new economic model but meets criticism from some traditional party backers British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he would press ahead with his government’s pledge to end the influx of low-paid migrant workers despite the country’s …

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Who Will Win and Lose in the Post-Covid Economy?

A wise, balanced article on national economic options which lie immediately ahead, post pandemic – published by the HBR, written  by Philipp Carlsson-Szlezak, Paul Swartz and Martin Reeves of Boston Consulting Group As an extraordinary recovery is underway, it won’t be long before business leaders face a perennial political economy question: With wages rising and …

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The future is not so bright

Realism or pessimism from Martin Wolf in the Financial Times – read on and decide? The 2020s will determine whether we have a chance of averting irreversible damage to the climate. But, for the UK, this comes together with other big challenges. Its response will also determine what happens to the wellbeing of its people. …

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Productivity After The Pandemic

Interesting views  expressed in the Financial Advisor magazine from Laura Tyson, former chair of the U.S. President’s Council of Economic Advisers, is Professor of the Graduate School at the Haas School of Business and Chair of the Blum Center Board of Trustees at the University of California, Berkeley. Sadly, as ever, they all hinge on …

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We’re Productive, But Are We ‘Okay?’

Rick Western, CEO at Kotter, is an expert in transformational change in complex global organizations and has spent more than 35 years assisting Fortune 100 companies with strategic initiatives, leading development activities and managing business units – he raises some interesting points about human capital well-being in an article for the ‘Chief Executive’ magazine which should …

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COVID’s creative destruction is cause for productivity optimism

Positive thinking from across the pond – Business in Vancouver, by Jock Finlayson and Ken Peacock  Amid the human carnage and economic pain caused by the COVID-19 calamity, it is tempting to search for silver linings. One that is attracting interest among some economists is the prospect of a productivity resurgence once the pandemic is firmly …

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The Key to solving the Productivity Puzzle

A very interesting approach has just been published in project-syndicate.org for solving the ‘Productivity Puzzle’ – it was written by Professor Diane Coyle, University of Cambridge who is also a member of the newly formed UK Productivity Institute Although the factors contributing to stagnant productivity are well known, economists and policymakers have so far paid …

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