The Measure of Progress - by Diane Coyle (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

Why do we use eighty-year-old metrics to understand today's economy?

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 In The Measure of Progress, Diane Coyle argues that the framework underpinning today's economic statistics is so outdated that it functions as a distorting lens, or even a set of blinkers.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.

Review Quotes

"In this book, which surveys a wide range of literature, Coyle goes much further than has been done before in monetary economics, setting out the problems with many current measures of components of GDP clearly."---Geoffrey Wood, Central Banking

"We should ALL read this important book. . . . While many of GDP's shortcomings are well-known, Coyle sets out elegantly and compellingly why these issues have now become so numerous, and so serious, that we should rethink radically how we measure our progress."---Kate Barker, The Society of Professional Economists

"[The Measure of Progress] should be widely read by anyone involved in economic policymaking or research."---Vic Duggan, Irish Times

About the Author

Diane Coyle is the Bennett Professor of Public Policy at the University of Cambridge. She is the author of Cogs and Monsters: What Economics Is and What It Should Be, GDP: A Brief but Affectionate History (both Princeton), and many other books.