The Soulful Science: What Economists Really Do and Why It Matters

To many, Thomas Carlyle's put-down of economics as "the dismal science" is as fitting now as it was 150 years ago. But Diane Coyle argues that economics today is more soulful than dismal, a more practical and human science than ever before. Building on the popularity of books such as Freakonomics that have applied economic thinking to the paradoxes of everyday life, The Soulful Science describes the remarkable creative renaissance in how economics is addressing the most fundamental questions--and how it is starting to help solve problems such as poverty and global warming. A lively and entertaining tour of the most exciting new economic thinking about big-picture problems, The Soulful Science uncovers the hidden humanization of economics over the past two decades. Coyle shows how better data, increased computing power, and techniques such as game theory have transformed economic theory and practice in recent years, enabling economists to make huge strides in understanding real human behavior. Using insights from psychology, evolution, and complexity, economists are revolutionizing efforts to solve the world's most serious problems by giving policymakers a new and vastly more accurate picture of human society than ever before. They are also building our capacity to understand how what we do today shapes what the world will look like tomorrow. And the consequences of these developments for human life, for governments, and for businesses are only now starting to be realized--in areas such as resource auctions, pollution-credit trading, and monetary policy. The Soulful Science tells us how economics got its soul back--and how it just might help save the planet's.problems, poverty, global warming, game theory, human behavior, psychology, evolution, complexity, resource auctions, pollution-credit trading

Online public debate about research is thriving, but we need to stay alert to the dangers of simplification.

Summarising a recent session on new trends in disseminating economics research, Diane Coyle looks at how researchers are influencing policy. The landscape of public debate has changed enormously, and blogs in particular have come to play a highly influential role. But responsibility must be taken for how public debate influences policy decision-making. It is intrinsically hard to demonstrate ‘impact’ on outcomes, and economists and other social scientists need to stay alert to the danger of simplification

A 21st Century BBC: a lecture by Diane Coyle, Acting Chair of the BBC Trust

In this lecture, Diane Coyle considers how the BBC can meet the challenge of providing a universal service while media channels proliferate and its audience becomes more and more diverse. She will also examine the BBC’s relationship with the state and ask how its independence is best protected

Book review: how to speak money by John Lanchester

John Lanchester, the bestselling author of Capital and Whoops!, aims to decode the global language of money for all of us, in an amusing and jargon-free read. Diane Coyle finds this is a very entertaining read and a clear guide to the kind of economics spoken in the financial markets and the media. Those who already speak the language would do well to read the initial essay and reflect on it, and in particular on what normal people hear when they are using the jargon

Five minutes with Diane Coyle: “The BBC needs to stay independent and accountable to the people who pay for it”

In an interview with Joel Suss, editor of the British Politics and Policy blog, Diane Coyle discusses the future of the BBC and the need for it to truly reflect Britain in all its diversity. She also discusses the impact of technology and globalisation. The transcript of her recent public lecture at the LSE, ‘A 21st Century BBC’, can be downloaded here

Conditional Projection by Means of Kalman Filtering

We establish that the recursive, state-space methods of Kalman filtering and smoothing can be used to implement the Doan, Litterman, and Sims (1983) approach to econometric forecast and policy evaluation. Compared with the methods outlined in Doan, Litterman, and Sims, the Kalman algorithms are more easily programmed and modified to incorporate different linear constraints, avoid cumbersome matrix inversions, and provide estimates of the full variance-covariance matrix of the constrained projection errors which can be used directly, under standard normality assumptions, to test statistically the likelihood and internal consistency of the forecast under study

Conditional Projection by Means of Kalman Filtering

We establish that the recursive, state-space methods of Kalman filtering and smoothing can be used to implement the Doan, Litterman, and Sims (1983) approach to econometric forecast and policy evaluation. Compared with the methods outlined in Doan, Litterman, and Sims, the Kalman algorithms are more easily programmed and modified to incorporate different linear constraints, avoid cumbersome matrix inversions, and provide estimates of the full variance-covariance matrix of the constrained projection errors which can be used directly, under standard normality assumptions, to test statistically the likelihood and internal consistency of the forecast under study.

Conditional Projection by Means of Kalman Filtering

We establish that the recursive, state-space methods of Kalman filtering and smoothing can be used to implement the Doan, Litterman, and Sims (1983) approach to econometric forecast and policy evaluation. Compared with the methods outlined in Doan, Litterman, and Sims, the Kalman algorithms are more easily programmed and modified to incorporate different linear constraints, avoid cumbersome matrix inversions, and provide estimates of the full variance covariance matrix of the constrained projection errors which can be used directly, under standard normality assumptions, to test statistically the likelihood and internal consistency of the forecast under study.

Cummings and Gove cannot reform Whitehall without reforming the Treasury

Dave Richards, Diane Coyle, Martin Smith, and Sam Warner explain why there is little that is novel in Gove and Cummings’s agenda for Whitehall reform. They argue that reformers would do well to consider why reform has been discussed for over 50 years but has yet to happen, and highlight that meaningful change will require Treasury reform