Bart van Ark is a Professor of Productivity Studies at the Alliance Manchester Business School (AMBS) at the University of Manchester. He is also Managing Director and Principal Investigator of The Productivity Institute, a UK-wide organisation which aims to lay the foundations for an era of sustained and inclusive productivity growth by bringing together academic research, policy studies and business engagement.

Van Ark is an internationally acclaimed economist in the field of international comparative productivity measurement and analysis, innovation and technology, and digital transformation, and his research has cut across the areas of economic growth, development economics, economic history and international economics and business.

From 2008 to 2020, van Ark was Chief Economist and Head of the Economy, Strategy and Finance Center at The Conference Board, a global business research think tank headquartered in New York, where he oversaw the production of widely watched economic indicators and growth forecasts around the globe. Since 2020 he has continued as Senior Advisor with The Conference Board.

Bart is also an Honorary Professor in Economics at the University of Groningen (the Netherlands), where he headed the Groningen Growth and Development Center, a research group working on long-term economic growth and productivity, from 2000 to 2008. During this period he also oversaw the EUKLEMS project, which represents the first Europe-wide effort to construct a growth and productivity database at industry level. Prior to 2000, van Ark was a lecturer in Economics at the Faculty of Economics and Business at the University of Groningen, and from 1988-1990 he was a research office at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research where he continues to serve as a research fellow.

Bart has published extensively on the topic of productivity in leading national and international journals, including the Journal of Economic Perspectives, The Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, and Economic Policy. From 2004–2008 he was managing editor of the Review of Income and Wealth. He has also been widely featured in major international business media, including Bloomberg, CNBC, Fox Business, the Financial Times, and The Wall Street Journal.