What's a Good Policy?

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Most economists are trained to be fundamentally utilitarians. They believe in some idea about the greatest good for the greatest number. But home is a little bit complicated for us, i'm one of em. We don't have a sense of place the way that somebody does ho grows up in one town and lives there their whole life. It's a different experience to be moving around. And so our presumption that you can find a money metric seems alien to many people. This is not just a u. K breke problem, missus. This is a kind of western economies problem, really.

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.