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.
Read more on A new way of looking at changing household incomes and prices
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.
Read more on How much is the UK worth? The challenges of capturing the value of our nation’s assets
How should we value the things we can’t touch or look at but still help to create prosperity and wealth? Many so-called ‘intangible’ assets, such as training or company branding don’t figure in the headline measures of GDP. Rachel O’Brien explains why these are not currently included and the work ONS is doing to estimate their value.
Read more on Getting in touch with intangible assets
Statisticians and trade negotiators have been scratching their heads to explain a phenomenon called ‘trade asymmetries’, where different countries’ estimates…
Read more on A global balancing act – exploring the asymmetries in world trade data
Recently GDP has come under some close scrutiny for failing to capture unpaid work and the impact of economic growth on the environment. Jonathan Athow looks at GDP’s strengths as well as some other measures and statistics that can be used to understand wider measures of well-being.
Read more on GDP: a worthwhile, but incomplete, measure