They did not. (I mean the statist ones most of which collapsed 15 years ago.) They used "net material product' which had its own problems, like double-counting intermediate goods.
At 01:50 10/05/05, you wrote:
Today's Wall Street Journal had a piece on hedonic pricing -- showing how dodgy price indexes are. We can learn from data -- I often call upon Doug for help in finding statistics -- but I think that we must realize how imprecise they are.
Maybe we should dust of Oskar Morgenstern's On the Accuracy of Economic Observations.
I enjoyed Tom's idea that statistics are born out of disaster and war. we had recently discussed the relationship between GNP data and the conduct of WW II.
Our data is also very much a reflection of our capitalist system. I do not believe that a socialist economy would have invented the same method for calculating a GDP. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929
Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
Robert Scott Gassler Professor of Economics Vesalius College of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel Pleinlaan 2 B-1050 Brussels Belgium
32.2.629.27.15
