How Government Statistics Adjust for Potential Biases from Quality Change and New Goods in an Age of Digital Technologies: A View from the Trenches

摘要

The US Congress created and funds the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and the US Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) to produce essential information on economic conditions to inform public and private decisions. A key economic indicator—what our economy produces during a time period—is called "real output" and measured as the nominal dollar value of gross domestic product (GDP) deflated by price indexes to remove the influence of inflation. To get this right, we need to measure accurately both the value of nominal GDP (done by BEA) and key price indexes (done mostly by BLS). Otherwise, real output and related measures like productivity growth statistics will be biased.