Economy

Getting the balance right – how ONS creates a single estimate of GDP

Categories: Economy, ONS

After 70 years of production Gross Domestic Product (GDP) remains the single most closely watched economic indicator. The success  of government economic policy is judged against it and it’s the yardstick for the scale of public spending and debt.  As Rob Kent-Smith explains, calculating GDP requires the informed balancing of sometimes contradictory data sources.     

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A new way of looking at changing household incomes and prices

Categories: Economy, ONS

In February 2017 ONS funded the establishment of a new independent research centre, the Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence (ESCoE). Its objective is to bring economic research closer to the production of economic statistics and identify new ways to address the fast-paced changes observed in the UK economy. Richard Heys explains. 

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How much is the UK worth? The challenges of capturing the value of our nation’s assets

Categories: Economy, ONS

ONS recently published estimates of the total value of all the assets held in the UK, known as the ‘National Balance Sheet’. This recent publication showed that the total value of all the assets was a staggeringly large £9.8 trillion (that is £9,800,000,000,000). Here, Dan Groves looks at what contributes into this headline number and what can make it go up and down over time.

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