Executive Summary

Eight years on from the start of the economic and financial crisis, the international economic context remains challenging, with growth still modest in advanced economies and continuing to slow in key emerging markets. While this weakness is in part cyclical, reflecting the realities of the post-crisis environment, it also results from a worrying slowdown in productivity growth which predates the crisis. Indeed, some 90% of OECD countries experienced a decline in trend labour productivity growth after the turn of the millennium, and the slowdown has now also spread to emerging market economies, despite their comparatively low productivity levels and continued scope for catch up.