Page 17 - Special Topic Session (STS) - Volume 1

STS339 Irene Salemink et al.
5.2 A growing demand to measure the economy adequate
“Measuring the economy has become even more challenging in recent
times, in part as a consequence of the digital revolution. Quality improvements
and product innovation have been especially rapid in the field of information
technology. Not only are such quality improvements themselves difficult to
measure, but they have also made possible completely new ways of
exchanging and providing services. Disruptive business models, such as those
of Spotify, Amazon Marketplace and Airbnb, are often not well-captured by
established statistical methods, while the increased opportunities enabled by
online connectivity and access to information provided through the internet
have muddied the boundary between work and home production. Moreover,
while measuring physical capital – machinery and structures – is hard enough,
in the modern economy, intangible and unobservable knowledge-based
assets have become increasingly important. Finally, businesses such as Google
operate across national boundaries in ways that can render it difficult to
allocate value added to particular countries in a meaningful fashion.
Measuring the economy has never been harder.” [4]
Towards the SBR this challenges to be more flexible in defining and
selecting populations, to be able to use information from administrative
sources and from various kinds of (big data) sources. Meanwhile the
consistency and the coherence within the system of economic statistics needs
to be preserved.

References
1. van Delden, A., Lammertsma, A., van de Ven, P. (2009): Chain
management in statistics: best practices, SN discussion paper 090403.
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2. Konen, R. (2014): Maintenance strategy of the Dutch SBR, 24 Meeting
of the Wiesbaden Group on Business Registers, Vienna, September 15 .
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3. Vennix, K. (2012): The treatment of large enterprise groups within
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Statistics Netherlands, ICES IV, Montreal, June 13 2012.
4. Professor Sir Charles Bean (2016): Independent Review of UK Economic
Statistics

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