Noah Smith, Columnist

The U.K. Can't Bet Its Future on Finance

Faster growth requires new growth industries and less dependence on banking.

May 4, 2018 at 6:00 AM UTC

Noah Smith is a former Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He was an assistant professor of finance at Stony Brook University, and he blogs at Noahpinion.

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The U.K. isn’t doing as badly as many predicted since it decided to exit the European Union in 2016. Employment rates remain high. Exports, which had surged to records in 2016, held up nicely in 2017.

But it’s not doing particularly well either. Since the financial crisis a decade ago, output per hour in the U.K. has remained essentially unchanged. Total factor productivity growth has actually been negative, and lagged many other rich countries well before Brexit: