In February, I had discussions with officials from the United States Bureaus of Economic Analysis (BEA) and Labour Statistics (BLS) and with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Statistics Department, about the implications of the economic crisis for official statistics. These meetings took place around my participation at the United Nations Statistical Commission.
There was a strong sense that official statistics are proving critical for monitoring and understanding the nature and depth of the economic crisis. There are also indications that official statistics are being scrutinised more closely by commentators searching beyond the headline figures for signs of recovery and changes in underlying dynamics. This extra level of scrutiny reinforces to us, the importance of maintaining high statistical standards.
One important observation I took from the discussions was that transparency has helped avoid more serious suspicions and that the current economic crisis does not appear to have been a result of the absence or shortage of official statistics. Indeed, the IMF observed that “the crisis would be much worse if we hadn’t published all the data we did”.
The quality of financial supervision, and perhaps associated financial surveillance information, is agreed as having been lacking, but broader economic statistics have generally been regarded as adequate.
There are some caveats to this, and the situation does vary from country to country:
- Inconsistencies across government accounts in many countries have impeded IMF monitoring. The BEA also emphasised the critical importance of sectoral accounts and particularly independent government accounts.
- The IMF and BEA both argued the merits of balance sheet and flow of funds accounts for improving the coherence and integration of real economy and financial sector information.
- The BEA did observe that annual International Investment Position (IIP) accounts were problematic for understanding the maturity and nature of foreign liabilities & assets that can change rapidly. New Zealand, of course, releases quarterly IIP figures so avoids this criticism.
- It was broadly agreed that there should be more attention to asset prices, especially house prices, and that house prices should be official statistics (or at least produced by a high quality, independent source such as the research company that produces a series in the USA).
- The IMF emphasised the importance of increasing timeliness, as did the BLS. Both asserted that earlier approximate figures were more useful than late, precise ones, and the BLS had some solid user feedback to this effect.
- The IMF argued that there was limited awareness of some key statistics and that greater attention to their dissemination – highlighting statistics that illustrate risk – should be a priority for national statistical offices. They identified limited reporting of non-bank financial institutions data as one such area.
- The BLS observed that recent CPI releases had been critiqued closely for not showing expected price declines, while employment data were being intensively searched beyond their headline figures for signs of recovery and changes in underlying trends.
In New York, I co-chaired a United Nations Statistics Commission seminar on Innovations in Official Statistics, hosted by the United Nations Statistics Division, and presented as part of the panel on innovations in data management and collections. The seminar proved interesting, with a number of innovations worth following up on.
There was a strong focus on the critical importance of institutional arrangements to deliver good official statistics, with many countries strengthening coordination of their official statistical systems. Use of administrative data was highlighted by many countries, including register-based censuses, and new user-feedback and dynamic customer relations systems were changing dissemination practices in exciting ways.
These international discussions have helped me to keep up with the latest international thinking, and to look at our operations in New Zealand in the light of wider perspectives. It is timely that here in New Zealand we are undertaking a refresh of the OSS Strategy and reviewing both the definition and the list of Tier 1 Statistics.
Geoff Bascand is the New Zealand Government Statistician and CE of Statistics New Zealand.