Making sense of economy

Abuse of Economic Statistics, Since the book is intended for beginners in economics, it is

particularly necessary to emphasise the limitations of statistics so that they are not mis-used to support conclusions they do not justify. There are, as Mr Polanyi shows, not only technical difficulties in compiling them and problems in interpreting them; where official statistics are published by governments that are themselves deeply emmeshed in economic life, they must be read with especial care to ensure that they reflect accurately the conditions they are supposed to describe. The Institute has published several specialist works analysing the difficulty of measuring economic phenomena and the care that must be taken in reading their statistical measurement. In his Eaton Paper, Rich and Poor Countries, Professor Dan Usher has shown the limitations of statistics of national income and the difficulty of comparing them in countries at different stages of development; Dr Malcolm Fisher has also shown in his Eaton Paper, Macro-Economic Models, the nature and limitations of econometric methods. The Institute hopes to publish more special ised works indicating the significance and defects of official measure ments of prices, production, earnings, imports and exports, and other well-established indices.