Recent Improvements in Official Economic Statistics

Abstract

SUMMARY This paper is concerned mainly with reviewing progress in developing official economic statistics during the last five years or so. Both macro- and micro-economic statistics are considered. There have been no really spectacular developments in macro-economic statistics in recent years-just steady progress. For example, new and more representative series have been introduced and published and more series are now disaggregated, seasonally adjusted and revalued at constant prices. On the other hand, there have been considerable improvements in micro-economic statistics, for example, in detailed statistics of production and incomes and for regions. The paper discusses problems of timeliness and reliability and the statistical discrepancies in the national income accounts. Although improvements are continually being made, it is believed that these discrepancies will never be eliminated because of reporting and sampling errors and because of difference in coverage, valuation and timing.