Economic Measurement Seminar

Economic Measurement Seminar - Content Outline

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U.S. Financial Accounts
- Flow matrix
  - Sources
  - Uses
  - interpretation of data
  - Sectors
    - Households and nonprofit organizations
    - Nonfinancial business
    - Governments
- Instrument categories
  - Instrument tables
  - Discrepancies in the financial accounts
- Integrated macroeconomic accounts
  - Agencies involved in production and publication
  - Conceptional basis and structure of the accounts
    - SNA methodology
    - Sectors
- Uses of the financial account
- As economic indicators of the economy
- Ratio of household net worth to disposable personal income
- Ratio of corporate and home equity to disposable personal income
International Statistics and the Balance of Payments
- BEA International Accounts
- International Transactions Accounts (ITAs)
  - Recognizing BPM5 and BPM6
  - Balance of payments accounts
    - Conceptual data reported
    - Relationship to economic conditions
  - Current account
    - Goods and services
    - Income
  - Financial account
    - What it measures
  - Classifications of data
  - Importance to understanding the economy
- International Investment Position (IIP)
  - Conceptual data reported
  - What data tells us
Measuring Employment
- Bureau of Labor Statistics
  - Employment Statistics
    - Employment Situation
      - Current Population Survey(CPS), Household Survey
      - Current Employment Statistics (CES),Payroll Survey
      - Differences in definitions/coverage
- Household survey
  - Survey design and methodology
    - Data collection
    - Unemployment Rate, Demographic detail
    - Seasonal adjustment
    - Sample size, Confidence intervals
    - Data revisions and benchmarking, pop controls
  - Civilian Noninstitutional Population, participation rate
    - Definition (16yrs and greater etc)
  - Labor force, including not in the labor force
    - Concepts (labor force, not in the labor force, discouraged workers)
    - Characteristics
    - Recent trends
  - Employment in household survey
    - Concepts
      - Employed persons (not jobs), Employment-population ratio
    - Characteristics of the employed
      - Demographic Characteristics
      - Involuntary part-time for economic reasons
  - Unemployment
    - Concepts (unemployment, unemployment rate)
    - Characteristics of the unemployed
    - Alternative measures of labor underutilization (U1-U6)
    - Duration of unemployment
    - Local Area Unemployment Statistics (LAUS)
Measuring Employment
- Payroll survey (Current Employment Statistics)
  - Survey design and methodology
    - Data collection
    - Estimation methodology
      - Birth/death estimates
    - Seasonal adjustment
      - X12 ARIMA Concurrent seasonal adjustment
      - Impact of Financial Crisis, intervention
    - Data revisions and benchmarking
  - Major uses of CES data
- Household and payroll survey comparison
Measuring Inflation
- Agency collecting and reporting
- Building blocks of the BLS CPI
  - Weighting: sources and updates
  - Data collection
    - Outlet visits
      - Disaggregation process
      - Sample period
      - Definition of price
    - Housing
      - Rental Equivalence
  - Estimating CPI
    - Stages of estimation
      - Stage 1: Laspeyres/Geometric mean
      - Stage 2: Laspeyres
    - Quality adjustment
    - Seasonal adjustment
- Comparison of CPI Measures: CPI-U, CPI-W, CPI-E
- Chained CPI-U
  - Substitution and weighting
  - Chained CPI-U as a cost of living measure
GDP and the National Income and Product Accounts
- What questions do the NIPAs address?
- How are the data used?
- Domestic income and product account (Account 1)
  - Gross domestic income and components
  - Gross domestic product
    - Expenditure categories
      - Shares
  - Relationship between GDP and GDI
- Income and outlay accounts (Accounts 2-4)
  - Personal income and components
  - Corporate profits and components
- Foreign transactions account (Account 5)
- Capital account (Accounts 6 and 7)
  - Domestic saving and investment
  - International financial transactions
    - Current account
    - Capital account
- Price measures and inflation adjustments (chaining)
Productivity

Importance to the economy
Measures of productivity
- Labor productivity
- Multi-factor productivity
Productivity concepts of output
Productivity concepts of inputs
Changes in productivity
Productivity and costs news release
- Measures reported
  - Output per hour
  - Compensation per hour
  - Unit labor costs
  - Headline measures
- Calculating labor productivity and unit labor costs
Industry labor productivity
- Importance
Multifactor productivity
- Measuring inputs
Finding the data

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