Ep. 328: Diane Coyle on GDP, Digital Gaps and Invisible AI Economy

Diane Coyle is the Bennett Professor of Public Policy at the University of Cambridge. She is the Research Director at the Bennett School of Public Policy. Diane’s latest book is ‘The Measure of Progress: Counting What Really Matters’. Her own research focuses on productivity, the digital economy and AI policy, and economic measurement. She has been writing about the effects of digital technologies since her first book, ‘The Weightless World’, in 1997.  Diane is currently a member of the UK Government’s Industrial Strategy Council, the New Towns Taskforce, and advises the Competition and Markets Authority. She has served previously in a number of public service roles including as Vice Chair of the BBC Trust, member of the Competition Commission, and of the Natural Capital Committee. Diane was awarded a DBE in 2023 for her contribution to economics and public policy. In this podcast we discuss: 

• Inadequacy of GDP measurement 
• Missing the digital economy; dealing with free digital services 
• How to measure productivity in services 
• Hard-to-measure sectors in GDP have shot up 
• Imputed prices vs. actual prices 
• Future of data collection 
• What happened in late 1800s with tech changes 
• Measuring true balance sheet of a country 
• Defining progress 

You can follow Diane’s work here.  

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