economic measurement progress and challenges the national income accounts together with the source data which they use form the core of our economic measurement system the development of the concepts and measurements of national income are among the most important achievements of modern economics replacing the older notions of national wealth of the physiocrats and mercantilists for example is national income and product confined to market activity the appropriate fundamental concept yes but we ask a lot of national income and product accounting it is used most importantly to gauge economic progress how much better off are we than our parents or grandparents is the economy growing adequately slowly or rapidly in recent years and are we at a cyclical turning point the information requirements of course will differ depending on the question gaps in inventory measurement may be an appropriate resource claimant to those interested in cyclical issues whereas finding identifying and incorporating new products and quality change more rapidly may be far more significant to long term economic growth we also tend to have a survivor selection bias in our concern with the speed with which new ideas and concepts are incorporated into the national accounts and other data series superlative indexes hedonic regression methods for quality change and many others were much more obvious after some years of diffusion throughout the profession than at their inculcation as a result the gap between major suggested improvements and their adoption by statistical agencies can be extensive often decades erwin diewert 1999 should national accounts be extended to nonmarket activity nonmarket work time is perhaps the most important area for supplemental information natural resources and the environment are close behind william d nordhaus and edward kokkenlenberg 1999 r d capital environmental capital human capital and other intangibles are high priority items but should be dealt with in the form of satellite accounting so i applaud the bea s recent initiatives in this direction i come to this conclusion for a variety of reasons not to suggest that technological capital and human capital are less important than tangible capital in fact perhaps quite the opposite they are all complementary boskin and lawrence lau 2000 but the issues in definition classification and measurements are still more problematic for these items than for traditional items and therefore i believe they should not be added directly to the national income and product accounts nipa in short my own view is that substantial improvements can and should be made in the traditional domain of the national accounts improvements in the core national accounts should not be sacrificed to a proliferation of satellite accounts in principle we should do both and sufficient resources should be provided to accomplish these tasks

do core inflation measures help forecast inflation abstract we conduct cointegration and granger causality tests for traditional and new measures of core inflation we find that both measures are consistent with desired properties of measures of underlying inflation but neither is very useful for forecasting purposes

how do scholars approach the circular economy a systematic literature review abstract circular economy ce aims to overcome the take make dispose linear pattern of production and consumption proposing a circular system in which the value of products materials and resources is maintained in the economy as long as possible in recent years there has been a proliferation of scholars publications on the topic this study presents the results of a systematic literature review exploring the state of the art of academic research on ce the paper examines the ce body of literature with a systematic approach to provide an exhaustive analysis of the phenomenon with rigorous and reproducible research criteria the revisited material consists of 565 articles collected through the web of science and scopus databases and has been evaluated using specific structural dimensions to group literature into analytical categories starting from being a concept studied in connection with industrial ecology ce has slowly acquired its independent role in academic research framed mainly into environmental sustainability related studies as a result of policies implementation academic production is mainly concentrated in china and europe employing tools and methods for modelling processes and supporting decision making for ce implementation e g life cycle assessment and material flow analysis ce studies follow three main lines of action the first aims to change the social and economic dynamics at macro and administrative level the second to support firms in circular processes implementation at micro level to spread new forms of consumption and product design the third developed at meso level discusses industrial symbiosis experiences ce is associated with a variety of concepts and waste management emerges as the most relevant sub sector ce is also strongly connected with the concept of sustainability proposing ways to operationalize its implementation at the environmental and economic level while scholars only marginally consider social and institutional implications the most explored practices are those related to cleaner production aiming at reducing environmental impact and waste production along the life cycle of a product and optimizing the performance and efficiency of processes conversely studies on ce may devote greater attention to strategies for social and institutional changes able to transform the upstream process of production and consumption considering business model strategies scholars mainly focus on studying closing material loops strategy while slowing the loops which requires a radical change of consumption and production patterns is only marginally included with respect to ce implementation this study s findings highlight ce as an evolving concept that still requires development to consolidate its definition boundaries principles and associated practices

prices and regional variation in welfare one would expect regional differences in prices to influence conclusions concerning levels and distributions of well being although there is anecdotal evidence of significant price dispersion across regions there is no governmental source of data that measures differences in price levels in this paper i integrate estimates of regional prices with expenditure data from the consumer expenditure surveys to assess the influence of price differences on living standards in the united states while prices have little effect on inequality estimates of poverty and the standard of living change substantially with the inclusion of regional price variation

sustainable economic production quantity models for inventory systems with shortage abstract recently new economic order production quantity models have shifted away from focusing only on economic issues and towards combined economic environmental concerns because of sustainable development goals despite this shift only a few works have addressed sustainable economic production quantity epq the theoretical sustainable eoq and epq models are basic models that ignore many real life conditions such as the possibility of stock out in inventory systems in this paper we develop four new sustainable economic production quantity models that consider different shortage situations to find optimal values of inventory system variables we solve four independent profit maximization problems for four different situations these proposed models include a basic model in which shortages are not allowed and when shortages are allowed the lost sale full backordering and partial backordering models can be selected by operations managers depending on the manufacturer s motivation to improve service levels we have also proposed an algorithm for determining optimum values of the decision variables for these sustainable economic production quantity models finally the formulated models are explained with some different examples and the obtained results have been analyzed and discussed these results show that the sustainable economic production quantity with partial backordering model is a general and more realistic model that can be used in many real cases with a reasonable profit amount compared with the three other proposed models

the relative pricing of u s treasury strips empirical evidence abstract we investigate pricing relations and the potential for arbitrage in the u s treasury strips market stressing the importance of reconciling quoted treasury data with actual market pricing conventions we document that stripping and reconstitution profits in the strips market are fleeting and rarely economically significant that matched maturity principal and coupon strips generally have different prices due at least in part to richness or cheapness in the underlying note or bond and that apparent negative forward rates in the strips market are concentrated in certain long maturity strips that do not actually exist at the time

negative option values are possible the impact of treasury bond futures on the cash u s treasury market abstract this paper uses a unique financial instrument in the u s treasury market to study the price behavior of the put option embedded in the november 2009 14 callable u s treasury bond we find that beginning in august 1993 the estimated option value was persistently negative on nearly every day for the ensuing eight months we show that the anomalous pricing behavior arose because the underlying callable bond became the cheapest to deliver issue against u s treasury bond futures contracts hence this paper provides direct evidence that derivative assets can significantly distort pricing in the primary asset market

retrospectives price indexes and general exchange values the spreading use of indexes in the nineteenth century raised basic questions concerning the nature of absolute value in a neoclassical world of relative exchange values where walsh held that the right index for the general exchange value of money would identify true values jevons marshall and especially keynes were highly skeptical that such values could be defined without interpersonal comparisons of utility subsequent political debates over the use of indexation especially those of world war ii and the current period have underlined the difficulty of identifying a true cost of living index applicable to all components of the population

towards a consensus on the circular economy abstract the growing importance of the concept of the circular economy as a way to attain sustainable development has encouraged scholars to propose different ways to understand it given the large number of studies done on the circular economy their differing approaches and their multiple applications this paper attempts to propose a consensus view of the basic notions of the circular economy framework and highlight its relationship with eco innovation to that end this study carried out a systematic literature review that resulted in four main outputs a knowledge map of the circular economy an analysis of the main notions of the concept principles and determinants of a circular economy finally this study brings to light some remarkable examples of eco innovations developed for implementation in the circular economy

do underlying measures of inflation outperform headline rates evidence from australian data many central banks often focus on underlying measures of inflation when assessing inflation trends this paper compares the accuracy of underlying measures of inflation relative to the headline rates by using australia data it is found that the underlying measures did have smaller errors in predicting the long term trend in inflation than the quarterly headline rate due to the volatility in the headline rate as compared to the year ended headline rate the statistical test results however support only the measure of market prices excluding volatile items not the others there is some weak evidence of the weighted median measure outperforming the headline rate in the sub period after 1993 with respect to directional accuracy the test statistics cannot reject the null hypothesis of an equal probability correctly predicting the moving direction of the inflation trend though the headline rates have a higher probability

the real real price of nonrenewable resources copper 1870 2000 over the past 40 years economists have devoted considerable effort to estimating long run trends in real commodity prices the results indicate that the real prices for many commodities have fallen suggesting to the surprise of many that resource scarcity is declining over time almost all of this work however uses the u s producer price index or other standard price deflators which recent research shows overestimate inflation for several reasons this article examines copper prices with adjusted deflators designed to eliminate this bias it finds that the trend over time which is significantly downward when no adjustment is made to the deflator displays no tendency in either direction or is significantly upward depending on the magnitude of the deflator adjustment employed these findings suggest that real resources prices provide less support than widely assumed for the hypothesis that resources are becoming more available or less scarce over time

do core inflation measures help forecast inflation out of sample evidence from french data abstract this paper compares the ability of four indicators of underlying or core inflation to forecast inflation in the french case though most indicators granger cause inflation results from out of sample tests of forecast accuracy are less compelling the results nevertheless seem to give some empirical support to trimmed mean indicators

development of the market for u s treasury strips 1992 development of the market for u s treasury strips financial analysts journal vol 48 no 2 pp 68 74

how government statistics adjust for potential biases from quality change and new goods in an age of digital technologies a view from the trenches abstract a key economic indicator is real output to get this right we need to measure accurately both the value of nominal gdp done by bureau of economic analaysis and key price indexes done mostly by bureau of labor statisticcs all of us have worked on these measurements while at the bls and the bea in this article we explore some of the thorny statistical and conceptual issues related to measuring a dynamic economy an often stated concern is that the national economic accounts miss some of the value of some goods and services arising from the growing digital economy we agree that measurement problems related to quality changes and new goods have likely caused growth of real output and productivity to be understated nevertheless these measurement issues are far from new and based on the magnitude and timing of recent changes we conclude that it is unlikely that they can account for the pattern of slower growth in recent years first we discuss how the bureau of labor statistics currently

beyond sustainability transforming industrial zero valued residues into increasing economic returns abstract excessive industrialization is creating enormous economic gaps chaos and unequal societies that are approaching dangerous limits simultaneously large quantities of residues waste and ecological footprints have been created in detriment to the natural environment and the quality of life of most of the planet s population mainly in developing regions this presents most innovators with a new dilemma invest in sustainable long term projects with low economic returns or innovate in short term incremental production and negotiate the environmental harm caused by an excessive industrialization in fact a significant milestone emerges from these arguments somehow we must reverse the perverse cycle created by industrialization and transform the current ecological footprint into valuable assets for all sub systems of the biosphere a proposal has been designed to go beyond sustainability and create sustainable wealth based on the modification of the conventional growth paradigm that can be used to regenerate regional natural resources and simultaneously be economically competitive and capable of offering important social benefits to the community the proposed framework swit sustainable wealth creation based on innovation and technology has been developed to provide multiple businesses of zero value residue industrial ecology processes zries inserted into circular value ecosystems cves all managed and governed by a sustainable sharing value system for the benefit of a community several cases of the application of the sustainable wealth creation framework mainly in developing countries are described

price inflation and stock returns abstract this letter demonstrates that price inflation and stock returns display differing relationships depending on the measure of inflation used the regularity that price inflation and stock returns are negatively related in post world war ii depends on the model specification

measuring core inflation in this paper we argue that measured rpi inflation is conceptually mismatched with core inflation the difference is more than just measurement error we propose a technique for measuring core inflation based on an explicit long run economic hypothesis core inflation is defined as that component of measured inflation that has no medium to long run impact on real output a notion that is consistent with the vertical long run phillips curve interpretation of the co movement in inflation and output we construct a measure of core inflation by placing dynamic restrictions on a vector autoregression var system

building resilience a self sustainable community approach to the triple bottom line abstract the purpose of this paper is to assess theoretically and empirically the governance approach associated with the formation of the circular value ecosystem cves within the sustainable wealth creation based on innovation and enabling technologies swit framework the swit framework is designed to interlink economic models policies and strategies so as to introduce and convert residue waste and by product chains into multiple increasing returns cycles unlike regional circular economy cases in germany japan and china where governments or industry have taken the lead on such initiatives a top down governance approach the swit framework was developed for regions where government support for eco initiatives is weak and where the participation of community stakeholders is critical a bottom up governance approach the ecological social and economic dimensions of the system are explored so as to ascertain the key stakeholders critical to the governance of the circular value ecosystem cves we seek to answer what stakeholders must be incorporated in a bottom up cves governance approach for the swit framework to be able to restore environmental resilience while creating economic returns and social benefits in rural communities we report the results of an action research case both successes and challenges which sought to test this community driven bottom up governance approach on a rural community in mexico our findings suggest that a bottom up governance approach requires a deep understanding of the social political environmental and economic characteristics of the community as well as civic collaboration

weighted median inflation is this core inflation this paper investigates core inflation defined as the best predictor of inflation i compare forecasts obtained using the mean weighted median trimmed mean and less food and energy inflation rates for the consumer price index and the personal consumption expenditure deflator for the current u s monetary policy regime another issue addressed is that of the systematic bias that exists due to the differences in means of these measures i test whether correcting for this bias can lead to better inflation forecasts this paper finds that adjusting for bias improves forecasting and that the weighted median is a better forecaster than the alternative measures and thus is a good measure of core inflation

computing productivity firm level evidence we explore the effect of computerization on productivity and output growth using data from 527 large us firms over 1987 1994 we find that computerization makes a contribution to measured productivity and output growth in the short term using one year differences that is consistent with normal returns to computer investments however the productivity and output contributions associated with computerization are up to five times greater over long periods using five to seven year differences the results suggest that the observed contribution of computerization is accompanied by relatively large and time consuming investments in complementary inputs such as organizational capital that may be omitted in conventional calculations of productivity the large long run contribution of computers and their associated complements that we uncover may partially explain the subsequent investment surge in computers in the late 1990s