Advances in Business Statistics, Methods and Data Collection

4Bridging the Gap Between Business and Macroeconomic Statistics: Methodological Considerations and Practical Solutions

Timo Koskimäki and Kristian Taskinen

Statistics Finland, Helsinki, Finland

4.1 Introduction

As regards economic statistics, there is an ongoing professional discussion on the quality of economic statistics, “The future of economic statistics.” This discussion has quite a practical driver: Economic statistics, as they are produced by National Statistical Offices (NSOs) today, clearly face difficulties in describing the national and global economies in a relevant and coherent manner. This is not only our perception as statisticians, there is also a growing distrust to traditional economic statistics among researchers, policymakers, and other users of economic statistics.

In this article, we attempt to bring the discussion on more practical level by first describing and reflecting how the global phenomena we observe in economic statistics emerge in the statistical practices when dealing with the compilation of business statistics. We also propose solutions to improve the coherence between business and macroeconomic statistics, stressing the importance of data sharing internationally between statistical offices and nationally between statistical units of national central banks and statistical offices. Statisticians should work together across national and institutional borders.

4.2 Global Production and Statistics

The traditional economic statistics face well‐known ...