The UK’s Productivity Problem: Hub No Spokes Speech given by  Andrew G Haldane Chief Economist Bank of England  Academy of Social Sciences Annual Lecture 28 June 2018  The views expressed here are not necessarily those of the Bank of England or the Monetary Policy Committee. I would like to thank Sandra Batten, Shiv Chowla, Gabor Pinter, Patrick Schneider, Brad Speigner and Pawel Smietanka for their help in preparing the text. I would like to thank Tera Allas, Ben Broadbent, Caroline Butler, Jeremy Franklin, Colm Manning, Richard Sherrington, Silvana Tenreyro, Ryland Thomas and Jan Vlieghe for their comments and contributions. This work contains statistical data from ONS which is Crown Copyright. The use of the ONS statistical data in this work does not imply the endorsement of the ONS in relation to the interpretation or analysis of the statistical data. This work uses research datasets which may not exactly reproduce National Statistics aggregates. 1  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  Introduction I am delighted to be giving this year’s Annual Lecture of the Academy of Social Sciences and honoured to be a Fellow of the Academy. I thought I would use the occasion to discuss an issue of pressing public policy concern, an issue that affects the living standards of each and every one of us and has, as best we can tell, since the dawn of time: productivity. It is a terrible word, as it leaves most people dazed and confused.

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