Dan yeah I think you are right. Soft skills along with economics competence is a good combination with programming. When I did the CS degree at Uni, the programming was scientifically directed, probably 80% of the time was spent coding and 20% reading CS books. So the coding we did was pretty advanced (for example I wrote an operating system), so that’s why I think I could gain back the programming skills pretty quickly.
Yes, it is possible to do coding in my current job, which I will try to do.
I also do a nanodegree at Udacity which could jumpstart getting the cobwebs off 
Dan, thanks so much for your input - I appreciate it. What kind of work do you do now by the way and do you think having a masters is an advantage?
Cheers!