New data collection on accrued-to-date social insurance pension entitlements in a national accounts context
This paper analyses results on social insurance pension liabilities and entitlements across OECD countries, on the basis of a new data collection. In addition to information on employment-related schemes (covered in the central framework of the...
OECD > Statistics Working PapersEthnic bias, economic success and trust
This paper studies ethnic in-group bias in online trust games played by two large representative samples in the United States and Germany through the Trustlab platform, which was launched by the OECD and several research partners in 2017. The ethnic...
OECD > Statistics Working PapersHow to measure distance to SDG targets anywhere
Achieving the 2030 Agenda requires understanding how far countries are from achieving its 17 goals and their 169 targets. To assist member countries in this assessment, the OECD Measuring Distance to the SDG Targets study applied a specific...
OECD > Statistics Working PapersHow far are OECD countries from achieving SDG targets for women and girls?
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) call to achieve peace and prosperity for all by 2030, leaving no one behind. This paper summarises available evidence to measure the distance that OECD countries need to travel in order to reach SDG targets...
OECD > Statistics Working PapersBusiness cycle dynamics after the Great Recession
The Great Recession and the subsequent period of subdued GDP growth in most advanced economies have highlighted the need for macroeconomic forecasters to account for sudden and deep recessions, periods of higher macroeconomic volatility, and...
OECD > Statistics Working PapersThe economy of well-being
As well-being has matured as a statistical and measurement agenda, it has become increasingly relevant as a “compass” for policy, with a growing number of countries using well-being metrics to guide decision-making and inform budgetary processes. One...
OECD > Statistics Working PapersMeasuring consumer inflation in a digital economy
The effect on the household consumption price index from possible sources of error in capturing digital products depends on the weight of the affected products. To calculate upper bounds for this effect, we apply weights based on the average...
OECD > Statistics Working PapersInequalities in emerging economies
The paper describes inequality trends in selected emerging economies (Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, China, India, Indonesia and South Africa) in a range of monetary (i.e. income) and non-monetary dimensions of people’s life (i.e. education, health...
OECD > Statistics Working PapersInternational productivity gaps
Cross-country differences in the measurement of labour input contribute to observed productivity gaps across countries. In most countries, labour force surveys (LFS) form a primary source of information for employment related statistics, such as...
OECD > Statistics Working PapersTowards global SEEA Air Emission Accounts
This paper describes and evaluates the OECD methodology to estimate Air Emission Accounts (AEAs) for carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O), in line with the System of Environmental Economic Accounting (SEEA).
OECD > Statistics Working PapersA long-term perspective on the development experience of emerging and industrialised economies
This paper describes development patterns beyond GDP in a long-term historical perspective. It revisits the discussion on the goals of development in light of the current discussions on ‘Beyond GDP’, provides evidence on GDP and well-being outcomes...
OECD > Statistics Working PapersDiversity statistics in the OECD
Data on ethnic, racial and indigenous identity can help render certain minorities statistically visible, and expose potential discrimination and inequalities. This paper systematically reviews diversity data collection practices in OECD countries and...
OECD > Statistics Working PapersMeasuring the impact of businesses on people’s well-being and sustainability
Businesses have a significant impact on people’s economic and social conditions, as well as on environmental outcomes. This paper presents an overview of the various kinds of initiatives aimed at measuring or reporting on business’ impact, or certain...
OECD > Statistics Working PapersPolicy use of well-being metrics
The last decade has seen major advances in the measurement of well-being in national statistics – but what are governments doing to incorporate these metrics and frameworks into policy decision making? This paper describes the progress made in many...
OECD > Statistics Working PapersProductivity measurement, R&D assets and mark-ups in OECD countries
A key feature of the 2008 revision of the System of National Accounts was the treatment of R&D expenditure as investment. The question arises whether the standard approach towards accounting for growth contribution of assets is justified given the...
OECD > Statistics Working PapersChild well-being and the Sustainable Development Goals
This paper summarises available evidence on the distance that OECD countries need to travel in order to reach the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) targets for children and young people. More than 50 indicators are included in this analysis,...
OECD > Statistics Working PapersIncluding unpaid household activities
The System of National Accounts, which provides information on important macroeconomic indicators such as Gross Domestic Product (GDP), household disposable income and final consumption, typically excludes the value of unpaid household activities....
OECD > Statistics Working PapersWhat matters the most to people?
The OECD Better Life Index is an interactive composite index that aggregates average measures of country’s well-being outcomes through weights defined by users. This paper studies these weights by analysing the responses given by close to 130 000...
OECD > Statistics Working PapersTrust and its determinants
This paper describes the results of an international initiative on trust (Trustlab) run in six OECD countries between November 2016 and November 2017 (France, Germany, Italy, Korea, Slovenia and the United States). Trustlab combines cutting-edge...
OECD > Statistics Working PapersInequalities in household wealth across OECD countries
This paper describes how household wealth is distributed in 28 OECD countries, based on evidence from the second wave of the OECD Wealth Distribution Database. A number of general patterns emerge from these data. First, wealth concentration is twice...
OECD > Statistics Working PapersThe accuracy of measures of institutional trust in household surveys
A key policy concern in recent years has been the decline in levels of trust by citizen in public institutions. Trust is one of the foundations upon which the legitimacy and sustainability of political systems are built. It is crucial to the...
OECD > Statistics Working PapersMeasures of interpersonal trust
Interpersonal trust (i.e. trust in other people) is an issue of high interest to both policy-makers and researchers seeking to understand what drives social and economic outcomes. However, for trust to usefully inform policy and analysis it is...
OECD > Statistics Working PapersCan potential mismeasurement of the digital economy explain the post-crisis slowdown in GDP and productivity growth?
The digital economy has created some new measurement challenges for macroeconomic statistics and may have exacerbated some older ones, raising some concerns about the scope and estimation of GDP. Against a backdrop of slowing rates of measured...
OECD > Statistics Working PapersIndicators on global value chains
Traditionally, the main source of data used to measure countries’ participation in international production networks or global value chains (GVCs) has been conventional international trade statistics. However, international fragmentation of...
OECD > Statistics Working PapersTime use surveys and experienced well-being in France and the United States
The last decade has seen a sustained surge of interest in measures of subjective well-being on the part of economists and other social scientists. The vast majority of the academic literature on subjective well-being focuses on measures of life...
OECD > Statistics Working PapersAccess to new data sources for statistics
New data sources, commonly referred to as “Big Data”, have attracted growing interest from National Statistical Institutes. They have the potential to complement official and more conventional statistics used, for instance, to determine progress...
OECD > Statistics Working PapersA Primer on Government-Sponsored Pension Schemes in the National Accounts and their Impact on the Interpretation of Government Debt Statistics
Government debt has many characteristics and thus cannot be fully captured by one indicator. There are several different ways of defining government debt, and each definition can lead to different interpretations of a government’s financial...
OECD > Statistics Working PapersEstimating Transport and Insurance Costs of International Trade
Although the costs associated with the international transport and insurance of merchandise trade are an important determinant of the volume and geography of international trade, remarkably little (official) data exist. Combining the largest and most...
OECD > Statistics Working PapersGovernance statistics in OECD countries and beyond
The paper provides a first assessment of the range of governance statistics that are available in OECD countries, reaching three main conclusions. First, while several statistics relating to various aspects of governance are already available, they...
OECD > Statistics Working PapersHas the Labour Share Declined?
We revisit the issue of how best to measure the labour and capital shares in OECD economies, distinguishing between production- and income-based perspectives. The former adopts a producer perspective with gross income as a reference: it uses a...
OECD > Statistics Working Papers