Regional Productivity Differences in the <scp>UK</scp> and France: From the Micro to the Macro

ABSTRACT We propose a new data resource that attempts to overcome limitations of standard firm‐level datasets for the United Kingdom (like the ARD/ABS) by building on administrative data covering the population of UK firms with at least one employee. We also construct a similar dataset for France and use both datasets to (1) provide some highlights of the data and an overall picture of the evolution of aggregate UK and French productivity and markups; (2) analyse the spatial distribution of productivity in both countries at a fine level of detail—228 Travel to Work Areas (TTWAs) for the United Kingdom and 297 Zones d'emploi (ZEs) for France—while focusing on the role of economic density. Our findings suggest that differences in firm productivity across regions are magnified in the aggregate by an increasing productivity return of density along the productivity distribution.