204. What Economics Is and What It Should Be feat. Diane Coyle

How can you be both interdisciplinary and be a contributing specialist in your discipline in this day andage? It's a core theme of this podcast, as well as our guests' research. 

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 latest book is “Cogs and Monsters: What Economics Is, and What It Should Be” on how economics needs to change to keep pace with the twenty-first century and the digital economy.

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. 

Diane joins Greg to discuss the shifting dynamics of economic measurement’ over and underestimating GDP’ mathiess; and why the public has such a skewed perception of what economists do.

Episode Quotes:

Why is the public's perception of economists skewed?

20:51: It's partly what they see on the news when they turn on the TV in the evening, and often it's somebody who works in the financial markets talking about the kinds of things that financial markets are trying to predict second by second. That's very dominant. I've done some work in schools over the years to try to encourage young women to go into economics because it's a very male-dominated profession. Both they and the boys in the class take away the idea that what economics is about is going to work on Wall Street or in the City here and making a lot of money. They think it's about money. And I think that's the dominant perception that people have. Money is a metric—we use it quite a lot. But it's not really what economics is about.

Data are social contracts

08:54: Data are not things that are given. They're things that are made—they’re social constructs.

How do you identify what’s happening in a market?

41:07: If you want to identify what's happening in a market, going and talking to people who participate in the market is a great way to find out about it. And you have megabytes of data. It's just text, and you can analyze that in a very systematic way. 

Diane's aspiration for economist

30:08: I would like, as us economists, to pay more attention to other insights from other disciplines from people who think differently to ourselves, that basic intellectual hygiene thing of talking to people who disagree with you so that you understand why you might be wrong. But I suppose my ultimate dream is we manage to make economics consistent with the human sciences. 

Show Links:

Recommended Resources:

• Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much - Book by Eldar Shafir
• Bob Schillers book on narrative
• Paul Romer
• Vegra Lickus (?) paper in 1994 in the American Economic Review ??

Guest Profile:

• Faculty Profile at University of Cambridge
• Professional Profile at Enlighten Economics
• Dianne Coyle on Twitter
• Dianne Coyle on LinkedIn

Her Work:

• Enlighten Economics
• Dianne Coyle on Google Scholar
• Cogs and Monsters: What Economics Is, and What It Should Be
• GDP: A Brief but Affectionate History - Revised and expanded Edition
• The Economics of Enough: How to Run the Economy as If the Future Matters 
• The Soulful Science: What Economists Really Do and Why It Matters - Revised Edition
• Sex, Drugs and Economics: An Unconventional Introduction to Economics
• Paradoxes of Prosperity: Why the New Capitalism Benefits All 
• Governing the World Economy (Themes for the 21st Century)

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