Ed Miliband’s plans to reward ‘good firms’ sounds good in theory but will be very difficult to implement in practice

Abstract

On Tuesday, Ed Miliband used his keynote speech to the Labour Conference in Liverpool to push for ‘good’ firms to be rewarded by government. While this policy may seem attractive, Henry Overman, using the example of innovative clusters, argues that this approach overestimates government’s ability to actually improve business competitiveness