ABSTRACT
Sir Alec Cairncross would have been most interested in the increasing emphasis on evidence-based policies, together with more sophisticated approaches to identifying cause and effect relationships. This is made possible by the much greater abundance of reliable data allied with our enormously extended capacity for digital data analysis and armoury of econometric techniques. A policy issue would certainly have got Sir Alec's attention the lagging growth performance of the Scottish economy and the economists' incomplete understanding of the growth process. Sir Alec noted that the Scottish Nationalists appeared to be on the way to exercising great political power but 'seemed to have little or no grasp of economics'. That initial surge faded but re-emerged in the devolved Scottish Parliament from 1999, culminating in the election of a Scottish Nationalist Party government in 2007, since when there has been a distinct evolution in economic policy, with a key emphasis on faster productivity growth.
