Specifically, I will look at historical data for the UK, at international data from a cross-section of countries and at sectoral and firm-specific data for UK companies. This empirical evidence suggests a long tail of countries and companies with low, slow productivity growth. These productivity laggards have been unable to keep-up, much less catch-up, with frontier countries and 7  companies. At the same time, an upper tail of companies and countries has maintained high and rising levels of productivity. These productivity leaders are pulling ever-further away from the lower tail. Or, put differently, rates of technological diffusion from leaders to laggards have slowed, and perhaps even stalled, recently. This empirical pattern sheds light on the two great macro-economic debates. It helps explain why we might see the co-existence of secular innovation (among leaders) and stagnation (among laggards). It helps account for the fall in productivity growth rates – namely, slower rates of diffusion of new innovation to the long lower tail of companies. And it helps explain the widening dispersion in households’ incomes, as the mirror-image of widening productivity differences across firms. 4  For example, Brynjolfsson and McAfee (2011, 2014). For example, Piketty (2014), Milanovic (2016). Stiglitz (2016). 7 This has been a key theme of recent work by the OECD, for example Andrews et al (2015). 5 6  3  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  3  This empirical prognosis also helps when devising policy measures to tackle these productivity problems.

They also report higher transparency of banking supervision (based on adherence to the IMF code) in industrial countries than in emerging economies. Another, more recent research (Liendrop at al., 2011) suggests that the overall level of transparency of supervisors in industrial countries is very similar to transparency of supervisors in emerging economies indicating to positive movements in emerging markets in the area in recent years. Indeed, supervisors seem to endorse transparency. In 2006 the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, in the Basel Core Principles for effective banking supervision, first mentioned that supervisors should follow transparent processes. This means that supervisors should disclose their objectives and  2  BIS central bankers’ speeches  framework and be held accountable for performing their duties in line with those objectives and framework. The Capital Requirements Directive IV (CRD IV) stipulates that supervisors need to publish relevant information on the laws, regulations, administrative rules and guidance, information on options and discretions, the general criteria and methodologies used in the supervisory review and evaluation process, and aggregate statistical data on the implementation of the prudential framework, including the number and nature of supervisory measures taken and administrative penalties imposed.The European Banking Authority (EBA) acknowledges the need for supervisory transparency and has set up guidelines for supervisory transparency (CEBS, 2010) intended to increase the transparency of supervisory practices and to enhance the comparability of national practices. Furthermore, EBA publishes relevant information of all EU countries on supervisory laws and regulations and statistical data on national banking sectors, risk indicators and supervisory actions.