Productivity Puzzles Across Europe

Philippe Askenazy, Senior Researcher CNRS-Paris School of Economics; Professor, Ecole Normale Superieure,Lutz Bellmann, Chair of Labour Economics and Institute for Employment Research, Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg; Head of the Research Department Establishments and Employment, The Research Institute of the Federal Employment Agency,Alex Bryson, Professor of Quantitative Social Science, Department of Social Science, University College London,Eva Moreno Galbis, Professor of Economics, University of Angers

Philippe Askenazy is senior researcher at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS-Paris School of Economics) and Professor of Economics at the Ecole Normale Superieure. He is also a research fellow of the IZA (Bonn). He received his PhD in political economics from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) and was deputy-director of Cepremap. His main research interests focus on growth, labour, and firm performances. They include theoretical and empirical studies on organizational and technical changes, occupational health and safety, R&D, and innovation.


Lutz Bellmann studied economics at the University of Hannover where he received his diploma in 1980. In 1985 he obtained his doctoral degree. From 1980 to 1988 he was research assistant at the Institute for Statistics and Econometrics at the University of Hannover, and from 1988 to 1997 he was research officer at the Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg. Since 1997 he has been Head of both the IAB Establishment Project and the Department for Establishments and Employment. He is also Chair of Labor Economics at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg and has lectured at the Universities of Bamberg, Basel, Nuremberg, Passau, Speyer, Trier, Tubingen, and Wurzburg. He completed his postdoctoral habilitation in 2003.


Alex Bryson is Professor of Quantitative Social Science at UCL's Department of Social Science. He is also a Visiting Research Fellow at IZA, Rutgers, and at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research where he was previously Head of the Employment Group. Prior to that he was Research Director at the Policy Studies Institute where he has worked for nineteen years. His research focuses on employment relations, labour economics, and programme evaluation.


Eva Moreno Galbis graduated in economics at the University of Valencia where she received the Award of Academic Excellence. She obtained her Master's Degree and her PhD at the Catholic University of Louvain. In September 2005 she joined the University of Maine as an assistant professor and in 2010 she became full professor at the University of Angers. She is a research fellow at IRES (Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales, Catholic University of Louvain) and at CREST (Centre de Recherche en Economie et Statistique, Paris).

Introduction, Philippe Askenazy, Christine Erhel, Martin Chevalier
1. Europe's Productivity Slowdown Revisited: A Comparative Perspective to the United States, Bart van Ark
2. Is Secular Stagnation the Future for Europe?, Nicholas Crafts
3. Understanding Productivity and Employment in a Fragmenting Economy: The Global Value Chain Approach, Marcel Timmer
4. Exploring the French Productivity Puzzle, Philippe Askenazy and Christine Erhel
5. The UK's Productivity Puzzle, Alex Bryson and John Forth
6. Discussion of the French and British Conundrums, Dan Andrews
7. The German Labour Market Puzzle in the Great Recession, Lutz Bellmann, Hans-Dieter Gerner, and Marie-Christine Laible
8. The Spanish Productivity Puzzle, Laura Hospido and Eva Moreno-Galbis
9. Comments on Two Polar Puzzles: Germany and Spain, Tito Boeri