Conference of European Statisticians Seminar: Impact of the Global Crisis on Statistical Systems

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Conference of European StatisticiansSeminar
Impact of the Global Crisis on Statistical
Systems

• Session 1 Financial statistics, balance sheets
  and cross-border linkages
• Paris, June 10, 2010

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Introduction

• Background
• The seminar on impact of the global financial
  crisis on official statistics is highly topical.
• A report on the financial crisis and information
  gaps was presented to the meeting of the G-20
  finance ministers and central bank governors last
  weekend.
• Three topics are covered in the seminar on which
  the crisis has thrown a spotlight
• First, on economic and financial statistics
• Second, on communication and timeliness
• Third, on social and household statistics
• The objective of the seminar to inform the work
  of both national and international agencies as
  they adapt priorities in response to the crisis

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Introduction

• Papers
• For session 1 there are three invited papers
• United States J.Steven Landefeld and Shaunda
  Villones
• The Financial Crisis and the need for better
  data
• World Trade Organization Marc Auboin, Hubert
  Escaith and Andreas Maurer
• Trade collapse, Data Gaps and the impact of the
  financial crisis on official statistics
• Statistics Norway Wenche Loven and Pål Martin
  Vinghøg
• Public Finance and the financial crisis What
  role should the statisticians and the NSOs play?

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Introduction

• Program
• 10.00 10.20 Overview
• Introducing the papers
• Broad themes
• Questions for authors
• 10.20 10.35 Replies by invited authors
• 10.35 11.05 General discussion
• 11.05 11.10 Short summary

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Introducing the papers

• Key statements
• United States
• Good statistics play a key role in forming
  public policy by publicly highlighting the
  magnitude of emerging problems and aid in the
  building of public consensus about the need for
  action.
• World Trade Organization
• It is important to make official statistics a
  robust system that can incorporate
  multi-dimensional changes in a constantly
  developing societal and economic environment, and
  extract meaningful and understandable signals out
  of them.

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Introducing the papers

• Key statements
• Norway
• We believe that that transparency in government
  operations and the quality of GFS is dependant on
  reliable fiscal information from the government
  agencies and that the responsibility for
  providing such lies primarily with the financial
  authorities..it should be the role and the
  responsibility of the NOSs to compile GFS
  according to internationally agreed principles.
  where (government) transactions are incorrectly
  entered into the National Accounts statistics it
  is the responsibility of Eurostat to point these
  out to the NSOs.

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Broad Themes

• Three broad issues emerge from the papers
• 1. The presentation of statistics this issue is
  also the subject of the next session.
• The US paper in particular highlights this issue,
  presenting available data in graph format to
  illustrate the build-of vulnerabilities before
  the crisis. The WTO paper speaks of statistics
  producers going the extra mile and providing
  stories alongside the data.
• The US paper also highlights the pitfalls of
  analyzing aggregated data the WTO paper too
  speaks of the appetite of users for more
  disaggregated data.

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Broad Themes

• 2. Identifying and addressing new data needs
  arising from the crisis.
• The WTO paper provides examples of structural
  change in trade related data - growth of
  intra-firm trade and different forms of trade
  credit not well covered but increasingly
  important.
• This point has a general application as is
  evident from the G20 report on the financial
  crisis and information gaps markets evolve and
  official statistics take time to catch up.
• The WTO paper warns against the over-supply of
  data that blur the underlying trend but also
  notes exponentially increase in the demand for
  high frequency trade data during the crisis.

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Broad Themes

• The joint responsibility for official statistics
• All three papers touch on this question, but
  notably the Norwegian paper. As noted above in
  the key statements, this paper considers that
  international agencies, financial authorities,
  and the NSO all have responsibilities.
• The US paper speaks of the benefits of a set of
  accounts that integrates information both from
  the BEA and Federal Reserve and the WTO paper
  speaks of numerous different data sources for
  trade related data.

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Broad Themes

• This leads to a range of interesting questions
• What is the relationship between analysts (public
  and private) and official statisticians in
  presenting and analyzing data? Post a crisis, the
  available data looks more damming because the
  outcomes are known and the focus is on the
  right data. But pre-crisis, attention may be
  elsewhere.
• Will the creation of macro-financial stability
  oversight units help statisticians in this regard
  by focusing attention on a new policy
  objective.
• How influenced to the needs of policy analysts
  should NSOs be in the presentation of data?

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Broad Themes

• Can statisticians better monitor and respond to
  structural changes in markets? Does there need to
  be a crisis to persuade data suppliers and users
  of the need for new or enhanced data sets?
• How can statisticians navigate between the
  dangers of the over-supply of data in normal
  times (including the burden on the supplier) and
  the urgent needs for data in a crisis?
• How should NSOs go about promoting the
  availability of more disaggregated data?

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Broad Themes

• What are the views on the extent to which there
  is a shared responsibility among supplier, the
  compiler (s) and/or the international agencies
  for good quality and comprehensive economic and
  financial data.

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Questions

• United States
• The paper sets out a number of graphs that
  provide good illustrations of the build-up of
  vulnerabilities before the crisis. Going
  forward, is the intention for the BEA to be more
  proactive in highlighting the trends and ratios
  evident in, but not typically publicized,
  official statistics?
• The paper notes that some important trends were
  missed because the data were too aggregated.
  What plans has BEA got to promote disaggregated
  data?

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Questions

• WTO
• Clearly in the crisis there was a strong demand
  for trade related data. But how should the
  statisticians navigate between the concern raised
  in the paper about an over-supply of data that
  blur the underlying trend and the need to
  strengthen trade related data? What are the
  priorities from your perspective? How can these
  priorities best be taken forward?
• The paper speaks of the statisticians providing
  stories alongside the data. Could you expand
  more on your thinking?

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Questions

• Norway
• The paper speaks of the responsibilities of
  international agencies, financial authorities and
  NSOs. Could you please expand on your thinking,
  particularly with regard to the relative
  responsibilities of each?
• The paper speaks of types of intervention by
  government. How best can NSOs ensure that they
  are kept informed of such developments and so
  they are treated consistent with international
  standards?

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Thank you for your attention