Abstract
The publication of this 2026 double issue marks an important moment for the Journal of Economic and Social Measurement, opening a renewed editorial phase while building on the intellectual tradition shaped by its previous editors, editorial board members, authors, reviewers, and readers. JESM has long provided a space for research concerned with the production, quality, interpretation, and use of economic and social data. That mission remains highly relevant. What has changed is the empirical environment in which economic and social measurement now takes place.
Economic and social life is increasingly recorded through official statistics, surveys, administrative records, corporate reporting systems, financial infrastructures, digital platforms, online behaviour, textual corpora, geospatial data, sensors, and algorithmic classifications. At the same time, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and computational methods are changing how researchers collect, process, classify, and interpret data. These developments create important opportunities for research, policy, and decision-making. They also raise a fundamental concern: more data do not automatically produce better measurement.
This concern is at the centre of JESM’s renewed direction. The journal’s future will be shaped by a simple but demanding question: how can economic and social phenomena be measured credibly in an age of data abundance, methodological complexity, and increasing reliance on computational and AI-assisted tools? This question is not only technical. It is conceptual, methodological, institutional, and ethical. It concerns the way variables are defined, indicators are constructed, datasets are assembled, models are estimated, and results are interpreted. It also concerns the assumptions that enter measurement systems before empirical analysis begins.
Measurement is often treated as a preliminary step in research, something that comes before the “real” analysis. JESM starts from a different position. Measurement is part of the scientific contribution itself. A paper may use an advanced method and still provide weak evidence if the object being measured is poorly defined, if the data are not aligned with the research question, or if the interpretation exceeds what the measure can support. Conversely, a carefully designed empirical study can make an important contribution when it clarifies a concept, improves an indicator, tests the validity of a measure, or shows how measurement choices affect economic and social conclusions.
The central challenge is not simply that researchers now have more data. It is that economic and social realities are increasingly mediated by measurement systems whose assumptions are not always visible. Which populations are captured by digital, administrative, survey, or platform data, and which remain invisible? When does an indicator measure a real economic phenomenon, and when does it reproduce the structure of the database from which it was built? How should researchers validate measures generated by algorithms, machine learning models, or large textual corpora? What happens when indicators are no longer only descriptive tools, but become instruments used in public policy, finance, labour markets, social protection, institutional evaluation, or corporate decision-making?
These questions are not peripheral to economic and social measurement. They define its future. JESM should become a journal where such questions are addressed openly, rigorously, and across disciplinary boundaries. The journal will therefore welcome research that not only applies data and methods, but also examines the conditions under which data and methods produce valid, interpretable, and socially meaningful evidence.
This renewed direction gives JESM a distinctive role. The journal will remain open to the full breadth of economic and social measurement: index-number theory, official statistics, survey design, data quality, productivity and efficiency analysis, fiscal and social indicators, sustainability and climate-related metrics, institutional and governance measures, labour-market measurement, inequality indicators, and policy-relevant empirical research. At the same time, it will more actively encourage work that connects these established areas with newer developments in data science, computational methods, machine learning, artificial intelligence, textual analysis, platform data, and digital transformation.
JESM is therefore well positioned to connect economic reasoning with statistical, computational, and AI-assisted approaches to measurement, without reducing measurement to modelling or prediction alone. The aim is not to narrow the journal, but to make its intellectual identity clearer. JESM should be a venue for research that takes measurement seriously, whether the contribution is theoretical, methodological, empirical, computational, or policy-oriented. The journal will continue to welcome strong empirical applications, especially when they are explicit about the constructs, data, indicators, and methods on which their conclusions depend. It will also encourage papers that develop, compare, validate, or critique measures used in economics, public policy, social analysis, finance, sustainability, technological change, and institutional evaluation.
The papers included in this double issue illustrate part of this breadth without exhausting the journal’s future agenda. They engage with cost-of-living index methodology, efficiency and productivity measurement in public cultural institutions, enterprise sustainability in natural dye-based textile production, fiscal devolution in India, trade, financial inclusion and gendered labour-market outcomes in Sub-Saharan Africa, and the relationship between digitalisation, structural change, artificial intelligence and demand for social programmes in African economies. The issue therefore reflects JESM’s inherited openness to empirical and methodological work, while also pointing toward a renewed emphasis on economic measurement, policy-relevant indicators, digital transformation, computationally informed methods, and AI-era research questions.
The Editorial Board has an important role in supporting this renewed phase. JESM is indebted to the previous editorial leadership and board members, whose work sustained the journal’s distinctive mission and preserved its place as a forum for economic and social measurement. Building on that contribution, the current board will support the journal as it engages with the evolving landscape of economic, social, statistical, computational, and policy-oriented measurement. This continuity is important because contemporary measurement problems rarely belong to a single discipline. They require economic reasoning, statistical judgement, institutional knowledge, methodological openness, and awareness of the social consequences of data-driven decisions.
In this new phase, JESM will be guided by three editorial commitments. The first is conceptual clarity. Authors should be explicit about what is being measured and why the proposed measure is appropriate. The second is methodological credibility. Data construction, modelling choices, robustness checks, uncertainty, and limitations should be transparent enough to allow readers to understand the strength and boundaries of the evidence. The third is responsible innovation. The journal will welcome advanced econometric, statistical, computational, and AI-based approaches when they improve measurement, interpretation, and knowledge, rather than adding technical complexity without substantive gain.
These commitments also apply to the editorial process itself. A journal that publishes work on measurement must be attentive to its own standards of judgement. Editorial decisions inevitably require evaluation, prioritisation, and interpretation. JESM’s renewed direction will therefore require consistency, transparency, and openness to diverse methodological traditions, provided that submissions meet the journal’s standards of rigour and relevance. The goal is not to narrow the range of acceptable work, but to make the journal’s expectations clearer: submissions should help readers understand how economic and social phenomena are measured, why those measures matter, and what can be learned from them.
The future of economic and social research will depend increasingly on the quality of the measures through which reality is made visible. Data-intensive research and artificial intelligence may expand what can be observed, but they also increase the risk of confusing visibility with validity. JESM’s role is to help prevent that confusion. The journal should support research that asks difficult questions about data, indicators, models, algorithms, and interpretation. It should encourage authors to treat measurement not as a mechanical step, but as a central condition of scientific credibility.
This renewed vision is also an invitation. I encourage authors, reviewers, Editorial Board members, and readers to help shape JESM as a forum for serious debate on the future of economic and social measurement. The journal will remain open to the breadth of the field, while moving forward with a clearer orientation toward the measurement challenges created by contemporary economic, social, technological, and institutional change. Its ambition is to publish work that is not only technically rigorous, but also conceptually meaningful, empirically credible, and useful for understanding the economies and societies that measurement seeks to represent.