WELCOME TO THE SIS 2021 SATELLETITE EVENT “Measuring uncertainty in key official economic statistics”

Official economic statistics are usually published as point estimates to simplify the communication to users. However, economic statistics are inevitably uncertain or, put another way, subject to “errors”. This reflects a long history, dating back at least to Kuznets (1948) and Morgenstern (1950), that emphasizes the uncertainty of economic statistics. Furthermore, more recently, statistical production methods that integrate new data sources (e.g. administrative registers, Big Data) may create additional sources for errors and uncertainties, which are not measured and communicated to the users.

Although several statistical organizations have started to invest in identifying ways to measure and communicate data uncertainty, this is only being done randomly, being more common the lack of the communication of data uncertainty. This may lead to a misinterpretation of the statistical results by the users.

The satellite meeting aims to propose methods to measure and communicate uncertainties in key official statistics.

The meeting will be structured in two sessions with the presentation of nine papers and their analysis by a discussant and then the floor will be open to the discussion of the attendees.

The papers will address the issue of uncertainty measurement in key official economic statistics, including Purchasing Power Parities, GDP growth, Consumer Price Indexes and Poverty measures.