The UK's Great Demand and Supply Recession*

Abstract

We revisit the weak productivity performance of the UK since the Great Recession by means of both a suitable theoretical framework and firm-level price and quantity data for detailed products, allowing us to measure both demand and its changes over time and distinguish between quantity total factor productivity and revenue total factor productivity. This in turn allows us to measure how changes in quantity TFP, demand and markups ultimately affected revenue TFP, as well as labour productivity, over the Great Recession. Our findings suggest that the weak productivity performance of UK firms post-recession is due to both weakening demand and decreasing quantity TFP pushing down sales, markups, revenue TFP and labour productivity.