A place-based system? Regional policy levers and the UK’s productivity challenge

National governments are increasingly focusing on ‘place’ in attempts to tackle economic challenges. This puts pressure on regions to deliver productivity improvements. Drawing from stakeholder interviews, document analysis and secondary data analysis, this paper considers the productivity policy levers available to regional leaders. Three UK regions are compared in relation to four policy levers (nodality; authority; treasure; organization) and four drivers of productivity (investment and innovation; transport infrastructure; entrepreneurship and employment; skills). Despite differences, all three regions can be identified as ‘nodality institutions’, lacking the authority, treasure and organization to drive productivity improvements.