Having given Treasury grief for their decorative wellbeing work, Josie gives them credit for hosting a global expert on productivity: Chad Syverson from the Chicago Booth School of Business. He added two new explanations for weak productivity:

• Good managers attract the right talent, come up with new products, and can make tough choices. Using this data, Chad showed that half a dozen highly productive countries also have the most competent business managers. We don't have either.
• The importance of competition. We're used to thinking about competition affecting the price of products, but it also affects our national income. In competitive markets, innovative businesses sweep away less productive ones, which is tough for the business that closes, but overall leads to resources being switched to doing things that create more with the same inputs. Competition causes innovation, boosts our wealth, and our wages. Now think about most of the businesses you deal with everyday: Supermarkets, banks, phones, power, even parking companies. When was the last time you can remember one of them being put out of business by an innovative upstart? Outside of the retail sector and some agile sectors like retirement care, most of our largest firms supplying the local market are comfortable oligopolies.

Chad reckons we have a chance to turn our productivity dial in the right direction. We're due some transformation, with too many kids going overseas because there’s not enough for them here.

The column is here.