The spectator combines incisive political analysis with books and arts reviews of unrivaled authority.

Subscribe today for just £12 and receive a 12-week subscription in print and online

and get a £20 Amazon gift voucher absolutely free.

Go to spectator.co.uk slash summer.

Hello and welcome to a Saturday edition of Coffee House Shots.

I'm Kate Andrews and I'm joined by economist Tyler Cowan.

Professor George Mason University, chairman of the Mercatus Center,

and co-author of the very popular economics blog Marchinal Revolution.

Tyler, you and I are meeting up in Cambridge.

We are at Civic Futures Great Stagnation Conference.

You are giving the keynote address and the conference and that address are named after a book

that you wrote not so recently over a decade ago.

Call the Great Stagnation, how America ate all the low-hanging fruit of modern history,

got sick and will eventually feel better.

Tyler, what you were writing about in 2011 has become a real focal point and for many people

an existential crisis about how advanced economies are going to deal with the fact

that they're slowing down, that they're stagnating, that they're not seeing the economic growth

that they once did.

Tell our listeners a little bit about what you were telling the conference,

what your thesis is, and how we get out of the great stagnation.

In Britain in particular, there has not been much real wage growth or productivity growth since

at least 2008, that's a long time for an economy to be stagnant.

...