John Van Reenen sketches the evolution of CEP research on the drivers of productivity growth - and its impact on policies to foster competition.

A classic question in industrial organization is whether competition raises productivity and if so, through what mechanism? I discuss recent empirical evidence from both large-scale databases and specific industries which suggests that tougher competition does indeed raise productivity and one...

Are poor management practices holding back middle-income countries? The authors look at evidence for private firms and public organisations in India - in manufacturing, retail, healthcare and education.

In this chapter we examine the relationship between Human Resource Management (HRM) and productivity. HRM includes incentive pay (individual and group) as well as many nonpay aspects of the employment relationship such as matching (hiring and firing) and work organization (e.g. teams, autonomy)....

How much does US-based R&D benefit other countries and through what mechanisms? We test the "technologysourcing" hypothesis that foreign research labs located on US soil tap into US R&D spillovers and improvehome country productivity. Using panels of UK and US firms matched to patent data we...

The impact of R&D on growth through spillovers has been a major topic of economic research over the last thirty years. A central problem in the literature is that firm performance is affected by two countervailing "spillovers": a positive effect from technology (knowledge) spillovers and...

Contingency formulations of Human Resource Management (HRM) theory suggest thatthe effectiveness of HRM practices should vary across firms. This study examinedwhether the relationship between HRM practices and productivity in manufacturingcompanies is contingent upon organizational climate and...