Mary Morgan (London School of Economics) - There are a number of important umbrella terms in economics that are well defined, and even invite quantification in their framing, yet whose measurement is, in practice, deeply problematic. They have acquired measurements, in the sense that the state and scientific structures have devised numbers for them. But the difficulties in numbering the elements crowded under those umbrella terms mean that their usage in both scientific and public policy domains invites questions about integrity and accountability of those measuring regimes and therefore the actions taken using them. Concepts like the ‘national income,’ ‘poverty’ and ‘development,’ provide good examples of the terms and the problems involved. They are umbrella concepts that are characterised by a considerable combination of elements, so the ‘measuring instruments’ used to anchor those terms into numbers must access a wide range of measurements for the elements associated with the concept. And then — if possible — economists must figure out how to integrate the individual measurements in some way that would capture the overall concept. For ‘national income,’ these multiple measurements are held together in a technical accounting framework that maps onto the conceptual level — the measuring system passes some basic kind of ‘representing’ account. But when it comes to providing measurements for ‘poverty’ or ‘development,’ the many characteristics involved are numbered separately in ‘indicators’ (of poverty, or of development) and these indicator numbers have no clear inter-relational structure that integrates them to provide the kind of single measurement with representing power that might be desirable for the overall concept. However, representing power should not be the only criteria. These numbers are regularly used for public action, and so the accountability, as well as the integrity of the measuring systems needs consideration. Whereas the accounting framework of the national income data provides a regime of internal audit, there is no obvious external accountability beyond the institutions that oversee them. It might seem that those numbers assembled to measure poverty and development would be even more problematic, but each of the separate ‘indicator’ numbers can be used by special interest groups to hold governments to account — so that there may be accountability without audit.
