Alan Harding - (GMCA), Author at COGITO

Alan Harding - (GMCA)

Alan Harding is a visiting Professor at the Alliance Manchester Business School and an Independent Strategic Economic Adviser to the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA). Most recently, with Sian Peake-Jones, he was a Policy Fellow at the Manchester-based Productivity Institute, completing a feasibility study on how the national ‘framework conditions’ under which subnational governments operate influences levels of prosperity and the extent to which they are shared. Previously, he was GMCA’s inaugural Chief Economic Adviser and the director of a number of applied academic research centres in northwest England specialising in comparative urban-regional development, policy and governance.

Reading Time: 3 minutesGreater Manchester has recently outpaced London in productivity growth – a surprising shift that’s prompting many to ask: Is this the long-awaited “devolution dividend”? And could it finally help close the UK’s deep economic divides? Our recent study for the Manchester-based Productivity Institute suggests that advances in data science make it possible to identify a “sweet spot” in subnational government design. We must find it.