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Hello, welcome to the podcast.

Now, there's a lot of economic gloom around the UK at the moment.

There's a lot of international comparison going on, not all of it very flattering.

And what we thought we might do today is take a closer look at one country, our closest neighbour,

to France. There, they have a shorter working week. They retire earlier. They live longer.

They eat very well, obviously. But what's very interesting is they're every bit as rich as we are.

In fact, the average worker, the median worker in France, is richer than their British equivalent.

And what one can definitely say about France is that for every hour they are at work, they get more done.

They produce more than we in the UK.

So surely there are some lessons from what the French are doing right.

And we'll see if we can get into exactly what it is that they're doing right.

Now, hopefully this discussion will allow us to understand France better, but also it allows us to talk about ourselves.

And I should say it's not all perfect there and all bad here,

but there is plenty we can learn. And I have three

guests to talk us through some comparisons. And first up is Rebecca Riley, Professor of Practice

and Economics at King's Business School in London, a member of something called the Productivity

Institute. First of all, Rebecca, when we talk about productivity, I don't know whether everybody

understands specifically what economists mean by that.

What do you mean by productivity?

Well, I think when we're talking about productivity, usually we're talking about the average

amount of value that gets added to the economy per hour spent working.

...