Cogs and Monsters: What Economics Is, and What It Should Be-齿轮与怪兽：经济学的现状与前景

来自剑桥大学的经济学家Diane Coyle，研究了包括全球金融危机和大流行病在内的各种动荡如何使人们对先前的信念产生怀疑，并在更大层面上助长了已有的对资本主义和经济学的怀疑态度。她还描述了经济学本身存在的诸多问题，包括已然固化的学术网络如何阻碍创新、好斗的辩论文化，以及缺乏性别和种族多样性等问题。


书名：Cogs and Monsters: What Economics Is, and What It Should Be《齿轮与怪兽：经济学的现状与前景》 

作者：Diane Coyle

简介：How economics needs to change to keep pace with the twenty-first century and the digital economy

Digital technology, big data, big tech, machine learning, and AI are revolutionizing both the tools of economics and the phenomena it seeks to measure, understand, and shape. In Cogs and Monsters , Diane Coyle explores the enormous problems―but also opportunities―facing economics today and examines what it must do to help policymakers solve the world’s crises, from pandemic recovery and inequality to slow growth and the climate emergency.

Mainstream economics, Coyle says, still assumes people are “cogs”―self-interested, calculating, independent agents interacting in defined contexts. But the digital economy is much more characterized by “monsters”―untethered, snowballing, and socially influenced unknowns. What is worse, by treating people as cogs, economics is creating its own monsters, leaving itself without the tools to understand the new problems it faces. In response, Coyle asks whether economic individualism is still valid in the digital economy, whether we need to measure growth and progress in new ways, and whether economics can ever be objective, since it influences what it analyzes. Just as important, the discipline needs to correct its striking lack of diversity and inclusion if it is to be able to offer new solutions to new problems.

Filled with original insights, Cogs and Monsters offers a road map for how economics can adapt to the rewiring of society, including by digital technologies, and realize its potential to play a hugely positive role in the twenty-first century.