What Does It Mean for a Policy to Make Things Better?

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Co-director of a public policy institute says we don't know how to answer that question in economics. It's given urgency the way machine learning systems are being used, he adds. He thinks economists should be spending much more time thinking about what it means to make things better.

Mainstream economics, says author Diane Coyle, keeps treating people like cogs: self-interested, rational agents. But in the digital economy, we're less sophisticated consumer and more monster under the influece of social media. Listen as the economist and former UK Treasury advisor tells EconTalk host Russ Roberts how, for economics to remain relevant, it needs both more diverse methodologies and more engagement with the broader issues of the day.