National Productivity Week 27th November 2023 | Visit Website

A diverse community of
leading experts, policymakers
and practitioners

The Institute’s key research themes
are led by ten academic partners
spread across the UK.

We’re a UK-wide research
organisation exploring what
productivity means for business

Businesses are crucial to solving
the UK’s productivity problems.

Professor Raquel Ortega-Argilés

Director of The Productivity Lab and Professor of Regional Economic Development at Alliance Manchester Business School

Career

Raquel is the Director of The Productivity Institute’s Productivity Lab, our centre of excellence for data-related activities, including joining data in a central repository and creating opportunities for augmented datasets.

Previously, Raquel was the Chair of Regional Economic Development at City-REDI institute and the Strategy and International Business department at Birmingham Business School, The University of Birmingham. Prior to that, she was a Rosalind Franklin Research Fellow at the department of Global Economics and Management in the Faculty of Economics and Business of the University of Groningen, the Netherlands; a postdoctoral researcher at the IN+ Center for Innovation, Technology and Policy Research of the Instituto Superior Técnico; a researcher at the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission; a senior research fellow in the Entrepreneurship, Growth and Public Policy group at the Max-Planck Institute of Economics; and a junior researcher at the Regional Quantitative Analysis research group of the University of Barcelona. Raquel holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Barcelona. She is an associate editor of Regional Studies and sits on the editorial boards of Letters in Spatial and Resource Science and Eurasian Business Review.

Her work has been published in international journals such as the Canadian Journal of Economics, Journal of Productivity Analysis, Empirical Economics, Economic Geography, Regional Studies, Research Policy, Journal of Regional Science, Annals of Regional Science, Papers in Regional Science, Science and Public Policy, Small Business Economics, Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Cambridge Journal of Regions Economy and Society as well as in refereed books on innovation and entrepreneurship, European policy or regional economic development topics.

Her policy analysis advisory roles are with very high-level institutions, including the European Commission, European Parliament, EU Committee of the Regions, OECD, EIB, EU Science Hub and government ministries across Europe.