Stone Lectures 2008 – Economic Data and Data in Economics

Sir Tony Atkinson, the Stone Lecturer 2008, delivered two lectures under the heading ‘Economic Data and the Distribution of Income’ at two NIESR events held at NIESR 15th April, 2008 and at the Bank of England 16th April, 2008.

These two lectures form the continuation of the lecture series jointly organised by National Institute of Economic and Social Research and Cambridge University Press. The Sir Richard Stone Lecture Series is a series of lectures by the world’s leading academic economists.

These two lectures were about economic data, taking as a case study the distribution of income, in the UK and in the world as a whole. In these lectures, Sir Tony argued we are inundated with economic data – on television, in newspapers, in political speeches – and economists have become ever more sophisticated in their econometric analyses. Yet, we rarely stop to examine their origins and their quality. Where do the statistics come from? What are their strengths and weaknesses? Do they measure what we want to measure?

Stone Lecture 1 "Economic Data and Data in Economics"

Speaker: Sir Tony Atkinson, FBA
Chair: Dr Martin Weale

The first lecture took place at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research.