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Yes, you can change GDP

Crawford School of Public Policy | Resources, Environment and Development Group

Event details

Seminar

Date & time

Friday 16 September 2016
12.30pm–1.30pm

Venue

Acton Theatre, Level 1, JG Crawford Building 132, Lennox Crossing, ANU

Speaker

Ehsan Masood, science journalist and the Editor of the research funding-news service, Research Professional.

Contacts

Yanhong Ouyang
6125 4387

GDP has become a dangerously addictive idea, but one that no government can now afford to ignore. It is dangerous because economic success is defined in a tightly restricted way. It is addictive because GDP can only ever point in one direction. But GDP isn’t some immutable law. It can change. Indeed, it has, just that change happens away from the public gaze and with little journalistic scrutiny. Science journalist Ehsan Masood has spent the past several years tracking how GDP is built; who gets to influence its components; and why alternative indicators have failed to find space inside its tent. In this seminar Ehsan will show how it is possible for the world’s most influential formula to change so that it measures what matters.

Ehsan Masood is a science journalist and the Editor of the research funding-news service, *Research Professional. He teaches science and innovation policy at Imperial College and is author of several books, including The Great Invention: The Story of GDP and the Making and Unmaking of the Modern World (Pegasus, 2016) and Science and Islam: A History (Icon, 2009), a tie-in for a BBC television and radio series. He has also made a number of documentaries for BBC radio, including Science: Right or Left, which explores the reasons why centre-right politicians are turning away from the scientific consensus. Ehsan has previously worked as a writer and editor at Nature and New Scientist.

This event is presented by the Resources, Environment and Development Group, at Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University.

View presentation slides at here.

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