On March 13, 2025 Diane Coyle, Bennett Professor of Public Policy at the University of Cambridge, will stop by the lab for her talk, “The Measure of Progress: Counting What Matters.”
Click here to register for the Zoom. Those in the Stanford community who would like to attend in person can register here.
More details will be posted here when they become available.
The ways that statisticians and governments measure the economy were developed in the 1940s, when the urgent economic problems were entirely different from those of today. In The Measure of Progress, Diane Coyle argues that the framework underpinning today’s economic statistics is so outdated that it functions as a distorting lens, or even a set of blinkers. When policymakers rely on such an antiquated conceptual tool, how can they measure, understand, and respond with any precision to what is happening in today’s digital economy? Coyle makes the case for a new framework, one that takes into consideration current economic realities.
Coyle explains why economic statistics matter. They are essential for guiding better economic policies; they involve questions of freedom, justice, life, and death. Governments use statistics that affect people’s lives in ways large and small. The metrics for economic growth were developed when a lack of physical rather than natural capital was the binding constraint on growth, intangible value was less important, and the pressing economic policy challenge was managing demand rather than supply. Today’s challenges are different. Growth in living standards in rich economies has slowed, despite remarkable innovation, particularly in digital technologies. As a result, politics is contentious and democracy strained.
Coyle argues that to understand the current economy, we need different data collected in a different framework of categories and definitions, and she offers some suggestions about what this would entail. Only with a new approach to measurement will we be able to achieve the right kind of growth for the benefit of all.
Professor Diane Coyle is the Bennett Professor of Public Policy at the University of Cambridge. Diane co-directs the Bennett Institute where she heads research under the themes of progress and productivity. Her new book, Cogs and Monsters, looks at how economics needs to change, while her previous book, Markets, State and People – Economics for Public Policy, examines how societies reach decisions about the use and allocation of economic resources.
Diane is also a director of the Productivity Institute, a fellow of the Office for National Statistics, an expert adviser to the National Infrastructure Commission, and Senior Independent Member of the ESRC Council.
She has served in public service roles including as vice chair of the BBC Trust, member of the Competition Commission, of the Migration Advisory Committee and of the Natural Capital Committee. Diane was professor of economics at the University of Manchester until March 2018 and was awarded a CBE for her contribution to the public understanding of economics in the 2018 New Year Honours.
Diane’s research interests include economic statistics and the digital economy, competition policy and digital markets, economics of new technologies, natural capital, and infrastructure. Her books include GDP: A Brief but Affectionate History, The Economics of Enough, The Soulful Science, and The Weightless World. Her recent papers have been published by Science, Review of International Political Economy, Nature, Antitrust Law Journal, and Regional Studies.
