Nobel laureate William Nordhaus on measuring the economy and the environment

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Nobel laureate William Nordhaus on measuring the economy and the environment

On Monday, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the 2018 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel to William Nordhaus “for integrating climate change into long-run macroeconomic analysis” and to Paul Romer “for integrating technological innovations into long-run macroeconomic analysis.” While the Academy recognized Nordhaus for his analysis of the …

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Previewing BEA’s benchmark national accounts updates coming on July 27

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Previewing BEA’s benchmark national accounts updates coming on July 27

During my 19 years at BEA, I felt that our most significant accomplishments were the four benchmark revisions or updates of the national accounts that were released in 1999, 2003, 2009, and 2013. On Friday, July 27, BEA will release its next benchmark update of the accounts. What makes these data releases so important? There’s …

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Are national economic statistics “filtered”?

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Are national economic statistics “filtered”?

Data users want to understand how official data are generated, and statistical agencies want to explain their methodologies. But sometimes the two groups seem to speak different languages. I saw an example in a recent article in Journal of Finance by Tim Kroencke, “Asset Pricing without Garbage” (HT: Jonathan Parker). Kroencke is analyzing a well-known model …

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2017 Annual Update of BEA’s National Income and Product Accounts

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2017 Annual Update of BEA’s National Income and Product Accounts

On Friday, BEA released the 2017 Annual Update of the National Income and Product Accounts. The U.S. national accounts data for the last three years, including GDP, were revised. At the level of total GDP, the revisions were small and the overall picture of economic activity isn’t a lot different from what we previously understood. …

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Why I’m concerned about the Census Bureau’s budget

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Why I’m concerned about the Census Bureau’s budget

On May 23, the administration released the President’s budget for fiscal year 2018. We now have enough details about the proposed budgets for statistics to start filling in detailed information about cuts. The Census Bureau is by far the largest of the U.S. statistical agencies. The budget proposes an increase for the Census Bureau of …

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What the textbooks get wrong when they explain GDP

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What the textbooks get wrong when they explain GDP

Most economics textbooks don’t devote a lot of space to explaining economic statistics, but they usually provide a short discussion of gross domestic product, or GDP. In limited space, they typically are able to explain some of the important features of GDP—that it’s a comprehensive measure of income and expenditure, that it measures transactions at …

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