This paper analyzes the availability, methodological soundness, and scope of National Accounts statistics in IMF member and non-member countries in 2020. National Account statistics are instrumental in the development of fiscal and monetary policy and in monitoring economic developments. This...

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2015 represent a new global consensus to end poverty, promote prosperity, and protect the environment. Goal 8 seeks to improve global resource efficiency in consumption and production and to decouple economic growth...

This paper describes the primary framework associating the four principal price indices in the system of economic statistics—the Producer Price Index (PPI), the Consumer Price Index (CPI), and the Export and Import Price Indices (XPI and MPI)—with the macroeconomic value aggregates they...

Comprehensive coverage of national accounts estimates is important; however, it is often thwarted by gaps in the recording of economic activity – the so-called “unrecorded economy”. This paper sets out pragmatic statistical approaches for incorporating the unrecorded economy in the...

Digitalization and the innovative use of digital technologies is changing the way we work, learn, communicate, buy and sell products. One emerging digital technology of growing importance is cloud computing. More and more businesses, governments and households are purchasing hardware and...

This paper examines the origins and use of the concept of Gross National Happiness (or subjective well-being) in the Kingdom of Bhutan, and the relationship between measured well-being and macroeconomic indicators. While there are only a few national surveys of Gross National Happiness in...

Benchmarking methods can be used to extrapolate (or 'nowcast') low-frequency benchmarks on the basis of available high-frequency indicators. Quarterly national accounts are a typical example, where a number of monthly and quarterly indicators of economic activity are used to calculate...

There are two approaches for producing volume estimates of GDP, fixed base year and annual chaining. While most advanced economies have adopted the chain-linked approach in the past twenty years, some African countries are hesitant to do so, in part because of the computation and data...

How can information on financial conditions be used to better understand macroeconomic developments and improve macroeconomic projections? We investigate this question for France by constructing country-specific financial conditions indices (FCIs) that are tailored to movements in GDP,...