Assessing Accuracy and Reliability: A Note Basedon Approaches Used in National Accounts and Balance of Payments Statistics

February 1, 2002

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Carol S Carson, and Lucie Laliberté. Assessing Accuracy and Reliability: A Note Basedon Approaches Used in National Accounts and Balance of Payments Statistics, (USA: International Monetary Fund, 2002) accessed November 21, 2024

Disclaimer: This Working Paper should not be reported as representing the views of the IMF.The views expressed in this Working Paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the IMF or IMF policy. Working Papers describe research in progress by the author(s) and are published to elicit comments and to further debate

Summary

Both national accounts and balance of payments are based on multiple, complex source data and typically undergo several routine revisions as more and better source data are incorporated into the final estimates. As a result, neither dataset can be subjected directly to the usual statistical measures of sampling biases, variances, and other measurement error properties. In this context, this note, which is addressed to those interested in these datasets and others, explores four approaches that shed light on the accuracy and reliability of these datasets: examination of statistical discrepancies, comparison with other data, analysis of revisions, and judgmental evaluation.

Subject: Balance of payments statistics, Data Quality Assessment Framework (DQAF), Economic and financial statistics, Fiscal accounting and reporting, Income, National accounts, Personal income, Public financial management (PFM)

Keywords: Accuracy, Asia and Pacific, Australia and New Zealand, Balance of payments statistics, Data confrontation, Data quality assessment framework, Data Quality Assessment Framework (DQAF), Fiscal accounting and reporting, GDP estimate, Global, Judgmental evaluation, Output data, Partner country data, Partner-country data comparison, Personal income, Reliability, Revision studies, Revisions, WP

Publication Details

Pages:

21
Volume:

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DOI:

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Issue:

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Series:

Working Paper No. 2002/024
Stock No:

WPIEA0242002
ISBN:

9781451844153
ISSN:

1018-5941

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