Do Government Agencies Use Public Data?: The Case of GNP

Peter Rathjens and Russell P Robins

The Review of Economics and Statistics, 1995, vol. 77, issue 1, 170-72

Abstract: In 1991, the U.S. Council of Economic Advisers undertook an initiative to increase the quality of economic statistics. One specific objective was to reduce the size of revisions in GNP estimates. The authors present evidence that one straightforward and inexpensive way of forwarding this objective is for the Department of Commerce to utilize better publicly available information released by other governmental agencies. An important caveat, however, applies: the relationship appears to be nonlinear. Specifically, the inefficient use of information is concentrated in those quarters where the change in the preliminary GNP estimate is large in absolute value. Copyright 1995 by MIT Press.

Date: 1995
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