The Enlightened Economist

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The political economy of horses for courses

2 months ago | enlightenmenteconomics.com | Diane Coyle

It was the fact of a lecture by Dan Breznitz at the University of Manchester for National Productivity Week that alerted me to his book Innovation in Real Places. Sadly I couldn’t get to Manchester for the lecture but I really recommend the book. Its core argument is that the shape of innovative businesses depends on the specifics of their economic context, making the hope to become the next Silicon Valley a forlorn one for most places, and requiring innovation policy to be appropriately tailored.
Swings and roundabouts - or slides?

2 months ago | enlightenmenteconomics.com | Diane Coyle

When you’ve seen as many ups and downs in the ranking of countries’ economic models as I have, it’s no surprise to learn that what was considered a sure-fire recipe for success at one time is portrayed as stagnation or sclerosis a decade or two later. The perceptions amplify relatively small differences in GDP growth, as the western economies tend to exhibit the same broad trends. Still, Wolfgang Munchau’s Kaput: The end of the German miracle was surprising.
The Enlightened Economist

Jan 14, 2025 | enlightenmenteconomics.com | Diane Coyle

It’s some months since I read Marietje Schaake’s The Tech Coup, as she delivered the ST Lee Poicy Lecture here in Cambridge last November 11th, right after the US presidential election. Just a short time later, her warning looks even more prescient than it did on the day, as the American tech executives bend the knee at the court of Mar A Lago.
The narrow path from votes of despair

Oct 9, 2024 | enlightenmenteconomics.com | Diane Coyle

I read Sam Freedman’s Failed State: Why Nothing Works and How We Fix It with a mixture of nods of recognition and gasps of disbelief. It’s all too apparentĀ that – as the subtitle puts it – nothing works in aspects of life in the UK dependent in some way on the successful design and implementation of government policy (which is most aspects tbh).
The welcome application of good sense to AI hype

Sep 29, 2024 | enlightenmenteconomics.com | Diane Coyle

Summer over in a flash, autumn wind and rain outside – perhaps cosy evenings will speed up both my reading and review-posting. I just finished AI Snake Oil by Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor, having long been a fan of the blog of the same name. The book is a really useful guide through the current hype. It distinguishes 3 kinds of AI: generative, predictive and content moderation AI – an interesting categorisation.
The Enlightened Economist

Sep 16, 2024 | enlightenmenteconomics.com | Diane Coyle

Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy by Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman is a rip-roaring read and simultaneously terrifying. The reader is left with the clear impression of fragility in the world financial system – bad enough in itself – that could tip over into armed conflict. Eek.
The Enlightened Economist

Sep 1, 2024 | enlightenmenteconomics.com | Diane Coyle

Already September 1st, and a tang of autumn in the morning air. I had a two-week holiday with no laptop or emails, and lots of reading. Then a two-week scramble to catch up with the accumulated email and work. So here is a summary of the books I got through. A couple were directly about AI: I, Warbot: The dawn of artificially intelligent combat by Kenneth Payne and The Age of AI by Henry Kissinger, Eric Schmidt and Daniel Huttenlocher.
The Enlightened Economist

Aug 29, 2024 | enlightenmenteconomics.com | Diane Coyle

Colleen Dunlavy’s Small, Medium, Large is an interesting and thought provoking read – and relevant to today’s debate on industrial policy. It’s a relatively short book, a history of the emergence of standards in US goods in the 1910s and 1920s. For example, in 1918-21 there were 78 different mattress sizes on the market and in 1922 the industry agreed to bring this down to 4 standard sizes, the ones we still use in the US and UK (apart from Ikea’s!).
Industrial policy - the long and the short of it.

Jul 22, 2024 | enlightenmenteconomics.com | Diane Coyle

I’ve been dipping into the proofs of a substantial book, Industrial Policy for the United States by Marc Fasteau and Ian Fletcher, due out in September. It will prove a significant resource for anybody interested in the issue. The book starts with the economic case for strategic government interventions in the supply side structure, arguments that have been gaining traction recently as the utlra-free marketism paradigm fades in the US and elsewhere.
The Enlightened Economist

Jul 17, 2024 | enlightenmenteconomics.com | Diane Coyle

My student Aneesha gave me a book a few weeks ago before she headed off to do her PhD in energy systems at Berkeley, The Grid by Gretchen Bakke. OK, I thought, I’ll give it a try – but how well she knows me. I loved this book. It’s part history of how the electricity grid was built, part diagnosis of how it’s all going wrong, and part reflection about the net zero transition. What I loved about it was the way it links this fundamental infrastructure system to its social and cultural context.