The Review Panel

Diane Coyle (Chair)

Diane Coyle co-directs the Bennet Institute for Public Policy at the University of Cambridge. She is heading research in the fields of public policy economics, technology, industrial strategy and global inequality.

Diane was previously Professor of Economics at the University of Manchester and has held a number of public service roles including Vice Chair of the BBC Trust (2006-2014), member of the Competition Commission (2001-2009), and member of the Migration Advisory Committee (2009-2014). She is currently a member of the Natural Capital Committee, an expert adviser to the National Infrastructure Commission and a member of the Council of Economic Advisers. She was awarded a CBE for her contribution to the public understanding of economics in the 2018 New Year Honours.

Darra Singh OBE

Darra Singh joined EY in January 2012 and was appointed as the UK’s Government and Public Sector lead in October 2016.

He was formerly Chief Executive of Job Centre Plus and Chief Executive of Ealing and Luton Councils. He was awarded an OBE in 2004 for services to local government. Darra chaired the Expert Working Group on Welfare Reform for the deputy first minister for Scotland and was the Chair of the Panel investigating the UK riots in August 2011. He was appointed by the Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition. Darra was the Chair of the Independent Commission for Local Government Finance.

Ed Glaeser

Edward Glaeser is the Fred and Eleanor Glimp Professor of Economics in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University, where he has taught since 1992. He regularly teaches microeconomics theory, and occasionally urban and public economics. He has served as Director of the Taubman Center for State and Local Government, and Director of the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston. He has published dozens of papers on cities economic growth, law, and economics. In particular, his work has focused on the determinants of city growth and the role of cities as centers of idea transmission. He received his PhD from the University of Chicago in 1992. His books include Cities, Agglomeration, and Spatial Equilibrium (Oxford University Press, 2008), Rethinking Federal Housing Policy (American Enterprise Institute Press, 2008), and Triumph of the City (Penguin Press, 2011).

Henry Overman

Henry Overman, BSc. (Bristol), Msc. (LSE), PhD. (LSE), AcSS, FRSA is Professor of Economic Geography in the department of Geography and Environment at the London School of Economics. From 2008 to 2013 he directed the BIS/ESRC/WG funded Spatial Economics Research Centre. From September 2013 he has directed the BEIS/CLG/DfT/DWP/ESRC funded What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth.

His current research interests include the causes and consequences of spatial disparities and the impact of urban and regional policy. His research has been published in leading economics journals (The Review of Economics Studies and The Quarterly Journal of Economics) and leading economic geography journals (Environment and Planning and Journal of Economic Geography). He continues to publish in journals from both disciplines.

He has provided policy advice to, amongst others, the European Commission, Department for International Development, Department for Business Innovation and Skills, Department for Communities and Local Government and the Department for Transport, HM Treasury, the Manchester Independent Economic Review, the North East Independent Economic Review and Cambridgeshire County Council. He is affiliated with the Centre for Economic Performance and the Centre for Economic Policy Research.

Mariana Mazzucato

Professor Mariana Mazzucato (PhD) holds the Chair in the Economics of Innovation and Public Value at University College London (UCL), and is Founder and Director of the UCL Institute for Innovation & Public Purpose (IIPP). IIPP is dedicated to rethinking the role of public policy in shaping both the rate of economic growth and its direction—and training the next generation of global leaders to build partnerships that can address mission-oriented societal goals.   

She is winner of the 2014 New Statesman SPERI Prize in Political Economy, the 2015 Hans-Matthöfer-Preis, and the 2018 Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought. She was named as one of the '3 most important thinkers about innovation' by the New Republic.  

Her highly-acclaimed book The Entrepreneurial State: debunking public vs. private sector myths (Anthem 2013; Public Affairs, 2015) was on the 2013 Books of the Year list of the Financial Times. It investigates the role of public organizations in playing the ‘investor of first resort’ role in the history of technological change—and the danger of ignoring this in economic theory and policy. She is co-editor of Rethinking Capitalism: Economics and Policy for Sustainable and Inclusive Growth (Wiley Blackwell, July 2016). Her new book The Value of Everything: making and taking in the global economy was published in April 2018 the UK by Penguin (Allen Lane), and is forthcoming in the USA in September 2018 by Public Affairs.

She advises policy makers around the world on innovation-led inclusive growth and is currently a member of the Scottish Government’s Council of Economic Advisors; the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network Leadership Council; and SITRA’s Advisory Panel in Finland.  She is currently a Special Advisor for the EC Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation, Carlos Moedas, and has recently authored a high impact EC report Mission-Oriented Research & Innovation in the European Union. She is also a Special Advisor to the Secretary General of the OECD, Angel Gurría, for the OECD’s New Growth Narrative. 

Stephanie Flanders

Stephanie Flanders has been Senior Executive Editor for Economics at Bloomberg News and head of Bloomberg Economics since October 2017. She was previously Chief Market Strategist for Europe at J P Morgan Asset Management in London (2013-17) and BBC Economics Editor (2008-13).  She served in the second Clinton Administration as speech writer and senior advisor to US Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers (1997-2001). She has also been a reporter at the New York Times, editorial-writer and economics columnist at the FT and an economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies and London Business School.  In 2016 she was appointed Chair of the Inclusive Growth Commission for the Royal Society of Arts, which delivered its final report in March 2017.