ESCoE Director Rebecca Riley reflects on the year and what’s next for the Centre in 2025
2024 has been a year of significant growth and achievement for ESCoE. Our research papers, conferences, webinars, and engagement initiatives have fostered collaboration, knowledge sharing, and the advancement of economic understanding through better measurement. As we look ahead to 2025, we are excited to welcome new leadership, strengthen international partnerships, and continue our mission of improving economic measurement through research.
Advancing research in economic measurement
In 2024 we have published a wide variety of research papers on economic measurement, covering everything from green jobs and “cheapflation” to sub-regional data and resilience to economic shocks. Many of these papers also had accompanying blogs.
To complement this research, we hosted webinars on topics including firm capability, inflation inequality, and local statistics. See more information about previous and upcoming webinars. Our next series will begin in January 2025.
Conferences
In May, we hosted our annual Conference on Economic Measurement in collaboration with partners The Productivity Institute (TPI) and Alliance Manchester Business School. The conference was an opportunity to immerse ourselves in the rich material presented and discussed, with keynote talks from Catherine L Mann, Rohini Pande and Chad Syverson. The 2025 conference will take place on 21 – 23 May 2025.
August saw ESCoE host the International Association of Income and Wealth (IARIW) General Conference at King’s Business School. Topics included the distribution of income and wealth and poverty, and the development of systems of economic and social accounting and their use for economic policy, with a keynote talk from Sir Robert Chote and opening from Sir Ian Diamond, UK National Statistician. The Ruggles lecture was given by Stephen Jenkins.
In November, we hosted the first UNSW-ESCoE Conference at UNSW Sydney. This featured keynotes from Jonathan Haskel and Paul Schreyer. There were also opening words from Dr David Gruen AO, Australian Statistician. The 2025 Conference will take place on 4 – 5 December 2025.
Public sector productivity
In April 2024, ESCoE hosted a discussion and networking event as part of our measurement in the modern economy series. This focused on measuring public sector productivity, featuring speakers Joe Grice and Mary O’Mahony (King’s College London and ESCoE) and Richard Heys (ONS).
Public sector productivity also featured in an ESCoE discussion paper from Martin Weale and Ron Smith and was a key topic at our May conference. Martin Weale also presented his work as part of a recent webinar. January 2025 will see a new paper from Mary O’Mahony, Mechelle Viernes and Martin Weale on reviewing approaches in the measurement of public sector productivity statistics.
UK inflation: What’s done and what’s to come?
In July, ESCoE hosted a speech from Jonathan Haskel on UK inflation in his final weeks as an external member of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee.
Using a newly constructed dataset, building on ESCoE’s Historic Data Repository, Jonathan contrasted our current experience to that of the 1970s. Using the Labour Force Survey as a case study, he reflected on the challenges of making policy in real-time, the importance of economic measurement to good decision-making and the outlook for wage growth and inflation.
Supporting early career researchers
In 2024, ESCoE launched a Master’s Dissertation Programme open to all UK Master’s students writing dissertations in economic measurement. The programme is run in partnership with the ONS and the Bank of England and is now open for applications in 2025. Read the blog from 2024 winner Kirill Kushnarev.
In November, we hosted a workshop for early career researchers and PhD students at King’s College London. This was a chance to come together across partner organisations, with presentations from visiting and ESCoE PhD students and early career researchers.
Engaging with others and sharing our impact
In March, we welcomed new Engagement Director Darren Morgan. Darren was previously Director of Economic Statistics at the ONS where he led the production and analysis of most of the UK’s official economic statistics. Since joining us, Darren has engaged with departments across government to share our research and impact and identify collaboration opportunities, both in the UK and internationally.
As part of this approach, we are pleased to have a new impact page on our website that links to stories on our impact, along with updated programme pages.
What’s next?
From January 2025, we are excited to welcome former OECD Chief Statistician Paul Schreyer to ESCoE as Research and Enterprise Director.
The Research and Enterprise Director role is new at ESCoE. Working with other members of the Leadership Executive, Paul will develop and deliver a cutting-edge research programme to improve understanding of the economy through innovation in economic measurement, data and statistics and will support the translation of research into statistics production.
As one Paul joins, another Paul takes on a different role – from January, Paul Mizen will be stepping down as ESCoE Deputy Director to focus on other commitments. Paul has been instrumental in advancing ESCoE’s mission and we look forward to continuing to work with him through our Leadership Executive.
Throughout 2025, we plan to strengthen ESCoE’s international impact and connections, with upcoming engagement with economic measurement initiatives in the US and a second conference in Sydney, Australia.
Finally, I would like to thank everyone we have worked with in 2024, particularly the UK Office for National Statistics. I wish you all a restful festive season and look forward to working with many of you again in 2025.