Ali wrote: >The point I want to make is again much of the statistics are
nationally generated; back in the good old days the qulaity was a bit
better because UN statisticians tried to systemetize the data and the data
collection process and provide assitance to national bureaus as needed.<
I recently read an article by Brad deLong
(http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/Econ_Articles/Jaffe/new_macroeconomy.html)
in which he cited an article by my old undergraduate senior thesis
dvisor, William Nordhaus, as saying that we should "throw the construction,
services, government, and the 'finance, insurance, and real estate' sectors
of the economy overboard as far as productivity calculations are concerned,
and to focus on the remaining sectors which he calls 'well-measured
output.'" (This is a quote from Brad, not from Bill. I can't tell which
Nordhaus article(s) Brad is summarizing.)
What's interesting is that this says that for many important purposes, the
old Soviet-style national income accounting (the calculation of the Gross
Material Product) was a better way of doing things! (Of course, we'd have
to throw out the double-counting.)
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
