Diane Coyle, Professor of Economics at Manchester University and one of ESCoE’s top researchers was a joint winner of the first Indigo Prize, a new economics prize that challenges entrants to consider how to measure economic activity in a 21st century economy.
Prof Coyle’s entry, written with IP Australia’s Chief Economist Benjamin Mitra-Kahn, proposes a radical replacement of GDP with a small dashboard recording people’s access to six key assets: physical assets, natural capital, human capital, intellectual property, social and institutional capital, and net financial capital.
The joint winner of the £125,000 first prize was a team led by Professor Jonathan Haskel of Imperial Business School, who proposed amending GDP to take account of the transformation of economic structure.
Prof Coyle said: “Conventional statistics like GDP have served us well but there is a widespread sense now that they are inadequate for today’s economic challenges. My co-author Benjamin Mitra-Kahn and I focussed on the need to measure people’s access to the assets they need to lead the kind of life they would find fulfilling, including financial and physical capital but also natural and intangible capital. The Indigo Prize is a welcome acknowledgement of the importance of the debate about what to measure and how to bring about change, and it’s an honour for us to have shared it with Professor Jonathan Haskel’s distinguished team.”
For more information or to organise an interview with Prof Coyle please contact the NIESR Press Office:
Paola Buonadonna on 0207 654 1923/ p.buonadonna@niesr.ac.uk
