National Productivity Boards: Institutional Set-up and Analyses of Productivity

In 2016, the Council of the European Union called on all euro area Member States to set up an NPB. NPBs consist of sectoral institutions aiming to foster debate on matters related to productivity and competitiveness. Six years after the adoption of the Council recommendation on the establishment of NPBs, the network of NPBs is now well established, although still incomplete. NPBs publish regular reports, thus contributing to evidence-based policymaking. Existing literature on NPBs, such as the two progress reports published by the European Commission, has mostly analysed their institutional set-up. This paper, while also reviewing the NPBs’ institutional characteristics and aspects to improve, in addition summarises the main findings of their annual reports, an area that has to date, received less attention. The topics discussed reflect a key challenge for EU economies, namely that of maintaining satisfactory rates of productivity growth, which is key not only to improve living standards sustainably and to foster real convergence, but also to address macrofinancial imbalances and more recently, to ease possible temporary tensions between addressing climate change and economic growth.