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"How economics needs to change to keep pace with the twenty-first century and the digital economy. Digital technology, big data, big tech, machine learning, and AI are revolutionizing both the tools of economics and the phenomena it seeks to measure, understand, and shape. In Cogs and Monsters, Diane Coyle explores the enormous problems-but also opportunities-facing economics today if it is to respond effectively to these dizzying changes and to help policymakers solve the world's crises, from pandemic recovery and inequality to slow growth and the climate emergency.Mainstream economics, Coyle says, still assumes people are "cogs"-self-interested, calculating, independent agents interacting in defined contexts. But the digital economy is much more characterized by "monsters"-untethered, snowballing, and socially influenced unknowns. What is worse, by treating people as cogs, economics is creating its own monsters, leaving itself without the tools to understand the new problems it faces. In response, Coyle asks whether economic individualism is still valid in the digital economy, whether we need to measure growth and progress in new ways, and whether economics can ever be objective, since it influences what it analyzes. Just as important, the discipline needs to correct its striking lack of diversity and inclusion if it is to be able to offer new solutions to new problems.Filled with original insights, Cogs and Monsters offers a roadmap for how economics can adapt to the rewiring of society, including by digital technologies, and realize its potential to play a hugely positive role in the twenty-first century."

Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- CONTENTS -- Note on the Paperback Edition -- Introduction -- ONE From the Eighteenth Century to the 1930s: War and Depression -- TWO 1945 to 1975: The Golden Age -- THREE The Legacy of the 1970s: A Crisis of Capitalism -- FOUR 1995 to 2005: The New Paradigm -- FIVE Our Times: The Great Crash -- SIX The Future: Twenty-first-Century GDP -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- Index.

The world's leading economies are facing not just one but many crises. The financial meltdown may not be over, climate change threatens major global disruption, economic inequality has reached extremes not seen for a century, and government and business are widely distrusted. At the same time, many people regret the consumerism and social corrosion of modern life. What these crises have in common, Diane Coyle argues, is a reckless disregard for the future--especially in the way the economy is run. How can we achieve the financial growth we need today without sacrificing a decent future for our.

1. The Weightless World -- 2. Where Have All The Jobs Gone? -- 3. Weightless Work -- 4. Nourishing the Grass Roots -- 5. Fear of Flexibility -- 6. The End of Welfare -- 7. The Ageing of Nations -- 8. Globalism and Globaloney -- 9. Visible and Invisible Cities -- 10. Weightless Government.

AbstractThe governance of the BBC has been a subject of political debate for the past two decades, which have brought two major upheavals in the corporation's governance structure. Yet, governance reform was not the best way to address the editorial and cultural crises that led to demands for change; and the current model is not adequate to protect licence fee payers' interests and the BBC's independence, particularly in the context of continuing ideological assaults on public service broadcasting.

AbstractAdam Smith saw the division of labour and specialisation as the driver of 'universal opulence', a process limited by the scope of the market. He also believed that competition was essential to ensure growth benefited the public. Yet eventually there could be a trade-off between these two mechanisms. In today's era of global production networks, the markets at certain links in supply chains may support just one specialised supplier; and in winner-take-all digital markets there is a single supplier even at global scale. When the scope of the market is global, there may be a trade-off between specialisation and competition.

Abstract
Many countries are proposing major public infrastructure investment, addressing the net zero imperative and need to recover from the pandemic. Yet the investments will deliver on these policy goals only if appraisals take account of strategic complementarities in determining the future path of the economy, including technological choices. Cost–benefit analysis as currently applied is unable to do this, even when incorporating wider economic benefits. Furthermore, in purporting to be a technical tool, it fails to acknowledge the inevitable political judgements and distributional consequences involved in selecting projects. There is a need for an approach to appraisal that identifies when major projects have transformational potential, and an approach to policy that ensures complementary investments occur, by tackling coordination failures either among different policy actors or between private- and public-sector activities.

Part of the debate about the 'productivity puzzle' concerns potential mismeasurement of GDP due to digital activities. This paper discusses some measurement issues arising from digitally‐enabled substitutions in activity across the conventional production boundary. Production boundary issues are not new, as conventionally defined GDP statistics account for the monetary cost but not the time cost of consumption and production. This means that changes in the way in which time is allocated between market and home production affect measured growth and productivity, as well as economic welfare. Just as technological innovation in domestic appliances led to a substitution from home production into market consumption in the second half of the 20th century, today's digital innovations are driving some reverse substitution out of the market into home production. Statistical agencies do not currently collect the data needed to measure the scale of the switch, but the available evidence suggests that it may be enough to make a contribution to understanding the current productivity puzzle.