British International Investment
31 July 2019

Video: The miracle of productivity

We regularly welcome speakers into our offices to share their experiences and views on a wide range of matters related to private sector development in Africa and South Asia. We were honoured to welcome Sir Paul Collier, Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford who spoke to us about the miracle of productivity.

Work and productivity is something we think about a lot at CDC. Our Director of Research and Policy Paddy Carter recently produced a report in which he examined the process of “creative destruction” – the process through which new higher productivity firms put older lower productivity firms out of business, so that over time the average productivity of firms in the economy will increase. While replacing unproductive units with more productive ones is certainly a contribution to economic transformation, it is not transformational. Rather than transform economies one investment at a time, Paddy looks at identifying which investments ripple out across the economy. Read more

 

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