This note examines labour market performance across countries through the lens of Okun's Law. We find that after the 1970s but prior to the global financial crisis of the 2000s, the Okun's Law relationship between output and unemployment became more homogenous across countries. These changes presumably reflected institutional and technological changes. But, at least in the short term, the global financial crisis undid much of this convergence, in part because the affected countries adopted different labour market policies in response to the global demand shock.

This note responds to the recent critique by Goodridge, Haskel and Wallis (GHW) of our 2012 study of Britain's productivity puzzle. We show that a correct reworking of the latest official data on changes in labour composition overturns GHW's main criticism. We also question the strength of the empirical evidence offered by GHW in support of their alternative explanations of the productivity puzzle.

This note responds to a critique of our recent paper, “Can Intangible Investment Explain the UK Productivity Puzzle?”. In that critique Martin and Rowthorn (MR) present a re-working of data on labour composition which they feel refutes an element of our argument. In this response we argue that the data are still in support of our original position. Essentially, the puzzle is that measured labour productivity has been falling, but labour quality is rising, so, at least on this measure, changes in labour quality cannot explain falling productivity.