Diane Coyle GDP: A Brief But Affectionate History. 2018-01-03
b'The Difficulty in Measuring the Immense Complexity of Our Modern Economy. Jim welcomes Diane Coyle, who heads Enlightenment Economics, a UK consultancy specializing in the economic and social effects of new technologies. In her latest book, GDP: A Brief But Affectionate History, Diane explains the inherent difficulty in measuring the immense complexity of our modern economy and how technological innovation, the predominance of services, and other qualitative factors are leading many groups to question the validity of GDP as an accurate figure. She also discusses why hedonic pricing was invented to try and solve the problem of measuring the exploding role of technology in the mid-1990s and some of the GDP alternatives that have been proposed. Diane was previously Economics Editor of The Independent and before that worked at the Treasury and in the private sector as an economist. She has a PhD from Harvard. Diane was awarded the OBE in January 2009.'