Cogs and Monster. What Economics Is, and What It Should Be

Translation from English by Alla Belykh; under scientific editorship by Andrey Belykh. – Moscow: Gaidar Institute Press, 2025. – 352 p.

ISBN 978-5-93255-686-3

Digital technology, big data, tech giants, machine learning, and AI are revolutionizing both the tools of economics and the phenomena it studies, conceptualizes and attempts to shape. In Screws and Monsters, Diane Coyle explores the major challenges and new opportunities facing economics and analyzes what needs to be done to help policymakers deal with global challenges, from pandemic recovery and inequality to slow growth and the climate crisis.

According to Coyle, traditional economics still views people as “cogs” – rational, calculating, independent agents interacting in defined context. 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. Coyle raises important questions: is economic individualism relevant in the digital age, is it time to measure growth and progress in a new way, and can economics be objective if it affects what it analyzes?