New Indicators for the MEI Nadim Ahmad OECD

New Indicators for the MEI Nadim Ahmad OECD Statistics Directorate Short-Term Economic Statistics Working Party Paris, 23 -24 June 2008

4 Target Areas –Entrepreneurship –House Price Indices –Labour Productivity –Accession Process – Index of Services?

Entrepreneurship – Work on Short term Indicators of Business dynamics – Scoping study using EU data for 2000 -2006 demonstrated feasibility of using LFS data to create: • (a) monthly/quarterly estimates of selfemployment and/or business ownership rates • (b) quarterly estimates of self-employment ‘startup’ rates • (c) self-employment ‘survival’ rates

Examples – UK: ‘start-ups’

‘Survival rates’ Probability of Remaining in Self-Employment by Quarter – UK, 2000 -2006

Entrepreneurship – But also the need to resolve a number of issues: • Small sample sizes create, for some countries, volatile start-up rates • A more serious problem for ‘survival rates’ as responses to “in self-emp for 0 -3 months’ ; “ 4 -6 months”; “ 7 -9 months” etc get incrementally smaller • Data is NSA. So, need to establish: (a) SA techniques (b) trend estimates of start-ups and (c) averaging overtime for survival rates (so, not really a ST indicator)

House Price Indices – Initial OECD country scoping study to create inventory of HPIs across OECD countries as input into Handbook on HPIs (now being led by Eurostat).

HPIs Monthly/Quarterly data available for most OECD countries AUSTRALIA KOREA AUSTRIA MEXICO CANADA NETHERLANDS CZECH REPUBLIC NEW ZEALAND DENMARK NORWAY FINLAND FRANCE PORTUGAL GERMANY GREECE SPAIN HUNGARY SWEDEN ICELAND SWITZERLAND IRELAND UNITED KINGDOM UNITED STATES

House Price Indices • But a number of issues require resolution • Best Practice/Concepts/Definitions (to form part of the Handbook). . . to help determine. . – the most appropriate national source (some countries have multiple sources) – Cross-country methodological differences – representativeness, weights, quality etc

Monthly Labour productivity – Building on development of ULC database, intention is to use similar sources of info to derive Q labour productivity estimates. – Likely to face similar obstacles, especially volatility, and will need to investigate whether trending and benchmarking techniques will also resolve/ameliorate these obstacles.

OECD Accession Country Process – CHILE – ESTONIA, – ISRAEL, – RUSSIA, – SLOVENIA

Index of Services – Building on earlier 2007 study and ‘Compilation Manual for IOS Production’, investigate scope and comparability of IOS data (and sectoral components) for OECD countries. – Earlier study revealed scope in AUS, CAN, JPN, KOR, MEX, NZL and US and EU (via Regulation). – But further investigations needed: e. g. deflators, sectoral coverage, correlation with SBS.