The McKinsey Global Institute last week released a report highlighting the fact that global debt has increased in the years since the credit crunch. Here Ian Crowther of the Business School at The University of Manchester analyses the findings and what the impact may be. A rather disturbing report was released by McKinsey Global Institute […]
Public policy and the hegemony of happiness
Policy fetishism about GDP is being replaced by an unthinking devotion to simplistic happiness indicators, warns Annie Austin. “In a decade’s time we’re going to be using happiness as the sole basis for judging the impact of public policy.” So stated Paul Dolan recently in the opening sequence of ITV’s Tonight programme, entitled ‘Is Britain […]
Time to ditch GDP as a measure of economic well-being
There is nothing inevitable or ‘natural’ about using GDP to measure the economy. The Office for National Statistics has embarked on a journey toward a more rounded assessment of economic well-being, argues Professor Diane Coyle. Just before Christmas, the Office for National Statistics took a giant step, in its normal low key manner: it published […]