What Do Bank Holidays Mean For The Economy?

by Viva Avasthi

The biggest economics-related news for the UK today has been that bank holidays are costing the British economy about £2.3 billion ($3.7 billion) per day. The Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) has suggested that bank holidays should be more evenly distributed throughout the year to stop businesses "losing momentum".

There has been a very mixed response to this by the British public as I have discovered by reading some comments on the BBC site under this article:

BBC News - Bank holidays 'cost economy £19bn'

My question: is there a correlation between the success of a country and the number of bank holidays it has? If not, what could be the reasons for such a large loss for the economy?