"Improving Economic Statistics in order to Improve Economic Policy and Research: (3) IO Tables, SNA Base-year Annual Estimates, and Healthcare, Education, and Government Administration Sectors" (in Japanese)

Yoshiro Miwa ()

No CIRJE-J-266, CIRJE J-Series from CIRJE, Faculty of Economics, University of Tokyo

Abstract: This is the third article in my series, "Improving Economic Statistics in order to Improve Economic Policy and Research". It fleshes out some of the issues presented in the first article, Miwa [2014a]. Focusing on information software, advertisement, and legal services for firms, the second article (Miwa, 2014b) investigates the availability and usefulness of several major sources of economic indices in service sectors: e.g., input-output (IO tables), GDP deflators, and productivity (growth) indexes. In particular, it examines IO tables and SNA base-year annual estimates. It concludes that the nominal GDP, GDP deflators and real GDP, GDP growth rate, inflation rate, and real productivity growth rate (both for the overall economy and the individual sectors) depend on fatally unclear generation methods (both statistical information based on and estimation methods). Relevant information simply is not disclosed. This article examines the same issues in the context of other service sectors where government regulation is stronger, such as healthcare, education, and the government administration. I focus on these three sectors for three reasons: first, their share in the overall economy is huge; second, with strong government regulations, better statistics and estimation materials may be available than in other service sectors; and third, for policy evaluation, there is a strong demand for information on the availability and reliability of relevant statistics in these sectors. I find that we have no better statistics in these sectors than in the service sectors I examine in the second article. Given the strong public interestin these secors, the inadequacy of the statistical information about them is tragic. The need is especially strong for more reliable deflators, for information about the size and size distribution of firms, for information about productivity and its growth rate, and for information about sectoral efficiency.

Pages: 55 pages
Date: 2014-11
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.cirje.e.u-tokyo.ac.jp/research/dp/2014/2014cj266.pdf

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:tky:jseres:2014cj266

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CIRJE J-Series from CIRJE, Faculty of Economics, University of Tokyo Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CIRJE administrative office ().