This event brings together researchers who are at the forefront of developing better economic indicators for policy making.

Democratic governance relies on a set of economic measures – including the gross domestic product (GDP), wage growth, and consumer spending data – that may not be the most insightful ones when we are interested in how economic benefits are experienced and distributed across society.

Richard Layard (LSE) will show how wellbeing can be the measure of benefit used in the UK government’s Spending Review – and the surprising results this produces. Martin Weale (King’s College London) will introduce a “democratic measure” of household income growth that weights all households equally – unlike traditional measures which effectively prioritise the wealthy – and can be produced using existing ONS data. Maria Cotofan (King’s College London) will present a new measure of “full earnings” – combining wages and non-pecuniary rewards – and show that inequality in the UK and US labour market – including gender and ethnic gaps – is significantly larger than earnings data alone would suggests. Finally, Peter Levell (Institute for Fiscal Studies) combines survey data with bank account and energy consumption information to produce new estimates of consumption across 367 British 367 local authority districts, demonstrating how financial footprint data in particular improve our ability to measure the living standards of communities.

This event of the King’s Centre for British Democracy – made possible by the School of Politics & Economic at King’s College London – will speak to core questions of economics and democracy, including those of inequalities generated by the way in which economic indicators are measured – and the incentives that these measures create.

The evening will be chaired by Olly Bartrum (King’s DPE alumnus and head of industrial policy analysis, UK Department for Business and Trade)

The event is taking place in room 405, in the Macadam Building, Surrey Street, WC2R 2NS.

SPEAKERS

Dr Maria Cotofan is an Assistant Professor in Economics and Policy at King’s College London, as well as a Research Associate at the LSE’s Centre for Economics Performance and the Wellbeing Research Centre at Oxford University. Her work centres on policy evaluation and themes such as inequality, the effects of deprivation and of poor economic experiences, and the well-functioning of labour markets.

Professor Lord Richard Layard is a leading labour economist who has concentrated on wellbeing for the last 25 years, writing (or co-authoring) 7 books on the subject, beginning with Happiness: Lessons from a New Science, translated into 20 languages. He is co-director of the Wellbeing programme at the Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.

Dr Peter Levell is Deputy Research Director at the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), which he joined in 2009. He has published several papers on the microeconomics of household spending and labour supply decisions. He has also written about the measurement and impact of inflation and is a member of the Office for National Statistics (ONS) Technical Advisory Panel on Consumer Prices.

Professor Martin Weale CBE is Professor of Economics at King’s College London. He is also Chair of the Committee to advise the National Statistician on Classifications, and a member of the ONS Technical Advisory Panel on Consumer Prices. Before joining King’s, he was a researcher and lecturer in Cambridge, moving to London to be Director of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) in 1995 and joining the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) of the Bank of England in 2010.. His recent work includes a study of the issues involved in incorporating the benefits of preventative medicine in the national accounts.

CHAIR

The evening chair – King’s alumnus Olly Bartrum – is currently head of industrial policy analysis in the Department for Business and Trade, developing the evidence base for industrial strategy policy development and implementation. He has previously led research on fiscal policy and economic policymaking at the Institute for Government, and worked as a macroeconomist at HM Treasury.