Another paper, by Nicholas Bloom, Mirko Draca and John Van Reenen, tries to do just that.

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Research was conducted by Nicholas Bloom of Stanford University, Rafaella Sadun of the Harvard Business School, and John Van Reenen of the London School of Economics.

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Nick Bloom, of Stanford University, and Rafaella Sadun and John Van Reenen, of the London School of Economics, find that British factories of American multinationals are more productive than the country's other foreign-owned establishments, which in turn are sharper than locally owned rivals.

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They often invest respectable sums in computers and information technology but do not seem to reap the same productivity gains from it as many American firms, according to John van Reenen and Nick Bloom of the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics.

ECONOMIST: A lost opportunity

This large and competent study, by professors Nick Bloom, Toby Kretschmer and John van Reenen, was actually read by some, be it clearly without a proper understanding of its methodology (which, indeed, it being an academic paper, is hard to fully appreciate without proper research methodology training).

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Fortunately, recently, professors Nick Bloom, Toby Kretschmer, and John van Reenen (from Stanford, the University of Munich, and the London School of Economics) conducted an extensive study examining the effect of family-friendly practices on hard variables such as firm sales per employee and return on capital employed, using a large database of firms from the US, the UK, Germany, and France.

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In a study with John Dowdy of McKinsey, a consultancy, Mr van Reenen concluded that British managers are partly at fault.

ECONOMIST: A lost opportunity