Productivity and tradability as drivers of regional disparities
19 November 2025, 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm
Location: NIESR, 2 Dean Trench Street, Smith Square, London SW1P 3HE
Think tank: National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR)
This event hosted by UK think tank NIESR discusses an economic geography approach to productivity to interpret regional disparities in the UK.
For the 2025 Prais Lecture on Productivity we will be welcoming Professor Anthony J. Venables.
UK regional disparities are strongly associated with differences in the sectoral structure of employment. This is partly to do with sectoral skill requirements, and largely to do with the location of tradable sectors that tend to cluster in a few places. These places have high physical productivity in tradable sectors, thus creating high cost of living, earnings, and revenue productivity across all sectors. This talk will outline an economic geography approach to productivity and use it to interpret regional disparities in the UK.
About the Speaker
Tony Venables is a senior research fellow at the University of Oxford, part-time research professor at Monash University, Melbourne and Honorary Professor at Alliance Manchester Business School. He is a fellow of the Econometric Society, the Regional Science Association and the British Academy. From 2020-22, he was the Research Director at The Productivity Institute.
Former positions include BP professor of economics at Oxford University and director of the Oxford Centre for the Analysis of Resource Rich Economies, chief economist at the UK Department for International Development, professor at the London School of Economics, and research manager of the trade group in the World Bank. He has published extensively in the areas of international trade and spatial economics, including work on trade and market structure, economic integration, multinational firms, natural resources, and economic geography and its application to urban and regional issues.
