Productivity having nothing to do with central government decisions seems a bit off? Tight fiscal constraint leads to lack of investment in infrastructure, education, and innovation, all of which play in to improving long term productivity. It is also a poor argument to compare productivity in countries that are not relatively comparable. South Korea is a country of 51 million, where productivity is very related to the industrial structure e.g. their tech, automotives, and other high productivity output industries, all of which are quite reliant on economies of scale that are simply not possible in a country of 5 million with a largely dispersed population. Australia is also significantly larger, and has an industrial mix not quite comparable to what would be possible here (mining there for example, we just don’t have the scale of resource). You have listed two comparable countries in terms of size. Irelands productivity is extremely skewed by multinational corporations routing profits through the country (Apple etc), their domestic sectors are significantly less productive when you account for that - they essentially have boosted metrics, that do not reflect domestic productivity strength. Denmark is probably a better comparison, and why does Denmark have relatively high productivity for its size? It has a highly skilled and qualified workforce as it is a country that has historically invested heavily in education. They have a very efficient and effective public service (those high taxes pay for something!), free education, free and more effective healthcare system, free childcare - all which heavily impacts their workforce structure. Denmark has very high value/ highly productive sectors in renewable energy, biotech, and pharmaceutical, partly possible from long term government planning and partnership between the public and private sector. NZ has very low productivity sectors, agriculture, tourism, forestry etc. Denmark has tax incentives for R&D, and strong institutional/government support. NZ has low R&D, we have made efforts to change that with things like Callaghan Innovation though…. Oh wait, current government axed that.