What can Britain’s coalition government do to promote economic growth? This is no simple challenge. But it must do what it can.
Why does this matter so much?
The first reason is that relatively small differences in economic growth make big differences to standards of living, in the long run. In the Green Budget from the Institute for Fiscal Studies, Michael Dicks of Barclays Capital forecasts post-crisis trend rate of growth of supply at only 1¾ per cent. Suppose, instead, that it were 2¼ per cent. Under plausible assumptions about population growth, income per head would be 24 per cent higher in 2030 than today, under the former assumption, but 36 per cent higher under the latter.