The Monday Briefing

With the holiday season almost upon us we are launching our summer reading list. The Economics Team read dozens of articles to come up with our top six picks for summer reading. All are available free and on-line. You can save these articles on your iPhone or iPad's reading list by opening the links on Safari and tapping on the share arrow next to the address bar. To print these articles please use the print icons, where available, on the webpages to ensure the whole article comes out. The Monday Briefing will continue to run throughout the summer.

Since the Industrial Revolution each generation in the UK has been around 25% better off than their parents. Rising prosperity has been driven by rising productivity – producing goods and services more efficiently. The standstill in UK productivity since the global financial crisis poses a power threat to the idea of rising prosperity across generations. This speech by the Bank of England's Chief Economist, Andy Haldane, provides a powerful account of what has gone wrong (19 pages and 17 pages of charts).

http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Documents/speeches/2017/speech968.pdf

In recent years the US has witnessed a strange phenomenon, as young American men opt out of work, or, in some cases, never start work. In the last 15 years the employment rate for men in their twenties without a college education has dropped from 82% to 72%. Young men are delaying key life events, such as buying a