The USA recently held National Agriculture Day. A key concern expressed by many of those participating this year was the need for greater investments in the very foundation of American agriculture: the research, development and extension services required to maintain the high productivity and environmental sustainability of American farmers and ranchers and to provide sufficient

What are the secrets to productivity development at the national level? Well, after many years experience in a range of countries, I would have to say "Don't ask me". There is no panacea, no golden bullet. If I had to offer any advice, it would be to ; Get the macroeconomy right - reduce regulation,

A number of agencies, and even countries, have attempted to create measures of 'happiness' - as an alternative to using GDP to value the work undertaken by people. This needs further work - but shows some promise. Lots of activity is currently not 'caught' in official GDP figures.  The work of volunteers, for example ...

The UK Office for National Statistics has just issued time series data for labour productivity across a number of years and for a number of sectors.  Quite interesting (for productivity nerds like me) but ultimately unhelpful in so far as the level of aggregation is so high that it has no effect on behaviour or

Some of you will now that I have been in Bahrain for the last week helping prepare for the World Productivity Congress which will be held here in November. (see worldproductivitycongress.net for details.) Conversations obviously covered the productivity of Bahrain and its move towards becoming a post-oil economy.  Lots of Bahrainis look at Dubai as

I am not a political animal - except insofar as I think I understand the role of government in creating the infrastructure required for productivity development (and have offered advice to quite a few governments over the years).  However, I must day that I am astonished by the current political scene in the USA. The

The UK languishes at the bottom of most productivity league tables.  We seem to be a low skill, low performing country.  Lots of 'good' jobs have been taken out of the economy and replaced with part-time, low skill employment.  The UK must start to invest in skills - and skill-based employment sectors.  Otherwise it will

India has the highest population of livestock in the world and produces a whopping 147 million metric tonnes of milk, a number also  unsurpassed by any other country. However,  when it comes to productivity, it is way behind most other nations -  Israel’s productivity is 10 times greater. India is starting to realise what it

I saw a piece on the web the other day that suggested that sensible, progressive governments should offer incentives to organisations to improve their productivity. But organisations surely want to improve their productivity because it reduces their costs, improves their performance and competitiveness and improves their profits. If this is not enough of an incentive,

The UK continues to languish behind the rest of the G7 in terms of its quoted productivity performance - yet my personal experience is that performance of the UK labour force has risen remarkably over the last few years.  This suggests that either I am mistaken (certainly a possibility as mine is only anecdotal evidence)