The Role of Statistics in the United States’ Economic Future “Statistics for policymaking: Europe 2020” Eurostat March 10th, 2011 J. Steven Landefeld, Director Bureau of Economic Analysis
2 The Need for Better Economics (and Better Data?)
3 How Did We “Miss” the Housing Bubble? Source: BEA NIPA data, Federal Reserve Board Flow of Funds data, Case-Shiller index -10 city composite index
4 Capital Gains, Savings and Consumer Spending: Bursting the Bubble Source: BEA NIPA data & Federal Reserve Board Flow of Funds data
Why Is GDP Up, but America is Down?
6 How Did We “Miss” the Stock Price Bubble? Source: BEA NIPA data, Standard and Poor’s data
What Excess Leverage? Total financial assets / total liabilities [ratio] Source: BEA & Federal Reserve Board Flow of Funds data
8 Why We Need to Look at Sustainable Investment Source: BEA NIPA data
What Are the Returns from R&D? ▪ Results from BEA’s 2010 R&D Satellite Account: Between , R&D accounted for 5.2 percent of growth in real GDP. Between , R&D’s contribution rose to 6.8 percent; in comparison, business investment in commercial and all other types of buildings accounted for just over 1 percent of real GDP growth. R&D’s stepped-up contribution is almost as large as the contribution of computers in the existing GDP measure.
The Need for More Accurate Health Care Data