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Aston University collaborates on £300,000 research project to address regional productivity and wage disparities in the UK

Aug 29, 2024

2 min

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  • The project is a collaboration between Aston University, the University of Sheffield and The Resolution Foundation
  • The project aims to leverage new, big data to help understand regional economic disparities
  • It is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).


Aston University, in collaboration with the University of Sheffield and The Resolution Foundation, has launched a significant research project to understand regional productivity and wage disparities in the UK.


The project has received £300,000 in funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) to uncover the factors driving economic imbalances using recent, big data.


The research will analyse how various factors such as workers' education, location choices, business types and sizes and regional infrastructure contribute to wage and productivity differences over the past 20 years. The aim is to understand these differences and suggest practical solutions for national and local governments.


Researchers will explore potential drivers of regional productivity gaps, including the clustering of highly skilled workers, regional industrial structures, and local endowments like transport links and housing availability. The findings will help identify effective policy measures to reduce these imbalances.


This project also aims to demonstrate how data analysis can help understand regional economic disparities. By reducing start-up costs for future research, it will build a community focused on tackling spatial economic imbalances.


Dr Anastasios Kitsos, a senior lecturer in economics at Aston Business School and principal investigator (PI) on the project, said:


“This project will analyse the relative importance of productivity drivers using novel, granular data from linked administrative datasets covering workers, firms and localities in England since the 2000s.


“This analysis will shed light into how much spatial productivity gaps can be explained by the characteristics of people, firms and places over time, and identify intrinsically more productive locations.


“Understanding and addressing the root causes of the UK's severe spatial disparities in economic performance is crucial for fostering inclusive, regionally balanced growth and enhancing national productivity. This project aims to provide actionable insights and build a foundation for future research and policy development in this critical area.


“The results will be shared in a comprehensive report detailing these influences over the past 20 years and offering policy recommendations for governments on skills, innovation, infrastructure, and local development strategies.”

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