{"id":327910,"date":"2010-02-16T11:53:00","date_gmt":"2010-02-16T16:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"e2249889-c78b-43e3-9643-b1d7d4aa587b:396571"},"modified":"2010-02-16T11:53:00","modified_gmt":"2010-02-16T16:53:00","slug":"better-government-statistics-needed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/327910","title":{"rendered":"Better government statistics needed"},"content":{"rendered":"

As bad as the global economic downturn has been over the past year, one thing has turned out to be even worse: government statistics. <\/p>\n

By now everybody knows that Athens\u2019s official numbers are the greatest work of Greek fiction since the Odyssey. It\u2019s also becoming clear that Japan\u2019s data is seriously wonky.<\/p>\n

The Asian nation announced Monday that its economy expanded at a much faster-than-expected 4.6% annual rate in the fourth quarter. Investors, though, aren\u2019t getting themselves too worked up. Japanese GDP numbers have a habit of being extensively revised.<\/p>\n

Take, for instance, the third-quarter figures. They originally showed that Japan\u2019s economy had grown 1.2% quarter-on-quarter, then were revised in December to show just 0.3% growth, then were further revised on Monday to show no growth at all<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The one good thing you can say about the quality of Japan\u2019s data is that it\u2019s better than Greece\u2019s. The New York Times reports that the former head of the Greek government statistical agency is still sticking by his story that the enormous Greek budget gap is a work of fiction<\/a>.
 
Manolis Kontopirakis says the new socialist government is trying to make itself look good by exaggerating the scale of the problems. The new government said last year that, sorry, folks, the deficit was going to be just under 13% of GDP, not the 4% that the previous government had promised.<\/p>\n

No matter who turns out to be right in this battle, it\u2019s clear that better data are needed. If governments around the world truly do want to throw money into job creation, one excellent place to start would be by hiring more and better statisticians.<\/p>\n

Freelance business journalist Ian McGugan blogs for the Financial Post.<\/i> <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As bad as the global economic downturn has been over the past year, one thing has turned out to be even worse: government statistics. By now everybody knows that Athens\u2019s official numbers are the greatest work of Greek fiction since the Odyssey. It\u2019s also becoming clear that Japan\u2019s data is seriously wonky. The Asian nation […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4060,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-327910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4060"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=327910"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327910\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=327910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=327910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=327910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}