The role of inefficiency in a productivity puzzle: regional evidence for Great Britain

From around the 2008 crisis there has been a marked slowdown in UK productivity. This has been referred to as a productivity puzzle as there is no consensus on the key explanations for this slowdown. Using data for all the 168 International Territorial Level 3 areas in Great Britain (2004–2020), we make two empirical contributions to the literature on this puzzle. First, we are the first to analyze this productivity puzzle using a stochastic frontier model to account for technical inefficiency. Second, to aid policymakers we uncover the areas that represent spatial total factor productivity (TFP) growth hubs, spokes, leaders and followers. Of the components of TFP growth (growth rates of technical change, returns to scale and efficiency), we find that Britain's productivity slowdown can be more specifically described as a rise in inefficiency.