OECD Short-Term Economic Statistics Working PartyJune 25-27 2007 Richard McKenzie OECD OECD / Eurostat taskforce on performing revisions analysis for sub-annual

OECD Short-Term Economic Statistics Working PartyJune 25-27 2007

Richard McKenzie

OECD

OECD / Eurostat taskforce on performing revisions analysis for

sub-annual economic statistics


OECD / Eurostat task-force on performing revisions analysis for sub-annual economic statistics

• Better coordinate work being done in the field of revisions analysis and revisions policy development

– Some NSOs have given this particular focus in recent years (e.g. ONS)

– OECD and ECB have done a lot of analysis

– Real-time (vintage) datasets being established

– Eurostat, IMF have looked a lot at revisions policy

– OECD / ONS 2004 workshop


Purpose of establishing a task-force

• Develop a set of guidelines on best practice for performing and using the results of revisions analyses

• Recommendations for revisions policy which effectively supports users’ needs

• Provide a set of standard tools for both producers and users to use as a resource to perform revisions analyses


Task-force members

• Organisations with experience in the subject matter. Taskforce brings together a group of experts, some with many years experience on this topic.

– OECD, Eurostat (chair), ECB

– United States Bureau of Census and Economic Analysis, Statistics Canada

– UK ONS (chair), ISTAT, Statistics Netherlands

• Finalised a terms of reference for the work of the task-force in January 2007


Terms of reference

1 Type and organisation of data required to perform revisions analysis

– OECD establishing an inventory of existing sources which meet or partially meet the needs of revisions analysis


Terms of reference

2 Summary statistics relevant to describe the outputs of revisions analysis, also to facilitate understanding by non experts

– Attempt to standardise the outputs of future revisions analysis studies

– ONS taking lead role and presenting some initial material at this meeting


Terms of reference

3 Develop a tool which users and producers can download to perform revisions analysis

– Improve on existing OECD tool (Excel currently, but could be optimised using visual basic macros)

– Support creation of summary statistics as deemed important by the task force

– Support more detailed analyses (see points 5 and 6)

– OECD, ONS and ISTAT


Terms of reference

4 Recommendations for revisions policy – information on revisions to be provided to users with the release of official statistics

– Frequency of revisions, linking revised and non revised parts of a time series

– Expected size of revisions based on past experience

– Reasons for recent revisions

– Eurostat leading, substantial input already from Canada and US Census.


Terms of reference

5 Define the different causes of revision and at what time intervals they are expected to occur.

– Goal to break down causes for revisions to say three or four homogeneous groups

– ONS presenting some initial material on this item, following input from Statistics Canada, US Census and ISTAT


Terms of reference

6 Decompose revisions analysis to quantify the impact of different homogeneous groups of reasons for revisions

– As a minimum, need to be able to separate the effect of seasonal adjustment on revisions

– OECD, ISTAT and ONS all giving presentations on work done on this issue and US Census has done some previous work on this issue


Terms of reference

7 Guidelines on how the results of revisions analyses can be used to identify problems in the statistical compilation process

– Netherlands taking lead role with input from ISTAT (taking into account output of items 5 and 6)


Terms of reference – Analytical studies

8a Relationship between revisions and the stability of different types of estimates (e.g. point estimates vs moving averages)

– Also provide a more laymans explanation / interpretation of whether revisions are ‘news’ or ‘noise’

– Bundesbank presentation at this meeting on first point, BEA working on the second


Terms of reference – Analytical studies

8b Relationship between timeliness and revisions

– Case studies on size of revisions before and after improvements in timeliness are made (and relate these to what was done to achieve timeliness improvement)

– OECD has done an initial study on Swedish Retail Trade

– ECB to do some studies at Euro area level


Governance and outputs

• OECD coordinates work of the task-force, Eurostat and ONS are co-chairs

• Interim outputs presented for feedback at STESWP and Euro-indicators working party meetings.

• Final guidelines on revisions analysis and recommendations on revisions policy to be submitted for endorsement to OECD Committee on Statistics and (possibly) EC Statistical Policy Committee in Autumn 2008


Governance and outputs

• Intention will be to bring guidelines / recommendations, task force outputs (including Excel tools) and other related literature together in a website product

– Similar to Short-Term Economic Statistics Timeliness Framework and Administrative Data Use Framework.


Summary of country comments

• Virtually all country papers included comments on the work of the task-force

– In general, very strong support for the terms of reference

– Some useful suggestions of other issues to consider

• Several reference papers provided and many gave detailed explanations of current revisions practices and policy

– Very useful reference material for the work of the task-force


THE END

Documents

OECD Short-Term Economic Statistics Working PartyJune 25-27 2007 Richard McKenzie OECD OECD / Eurostat taskforce on performing revisions analysis for sub-annual