Dear NBER colleagues,
Attached (and as text below) is a call for
proposals for The 2008 World Congress on National
Accounts and Economic Performance Measures for
Nations, to be held May 13-17, 2008, in Washington DC.
We look forward to your proposals,
Co-chairs of the Program Committee
Richard B. Freeman
Harvard University and NBER
Alice Nakamura
University of Alberta School of Business
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CALL FOR PAPERS AND PARTICIPANTS
The 2008 World Congress on National Accounts and Economic
Performance Measures for Nations
May 13-17, 2008, Key Bridge Marriott, minutes from Washington DC
The Congress will bring together academic,
research institute, and statistical agency
researchers to exchange ideas on how to improve
the system of national accounts (SNA) and
productivity measurement to understand modern
economic realities. Better statistics are needed
for understanding the context for the employment
and income outcomes of workers and their
families. National statistics systems have not
kept up with the realities of outsourcing and
offshoring or with the deepening of intermediate
goods trade. New types of data such as investment
in intangibles hold the promise to help make
sense of growth trends and data anomalies.
Harmonized international data are needed as well
for comparative purposes and to understand the
impacts of global economic integration. Surveys
conducted by monetary authorities of business
opinions, economic forecasts, and household
budgets supplement the data produced by
statistical agencies and directly inform policy
decisions. Central banks are also active in
collecting and using microdata sets that can shed light on key economic trends.
Each day will be divided between parallel expert
sessions and plenary meetings, special lectures,
shorter talks, and panel discussions. To
facilitate frank discussions, sessions will be
open only to invited participants. Continental
breakfast and lunch will be provided on May 13-17 and dinner on May 12-17.
There will be evening celebrations for the SNA
revision, the new XMPI Manual, EU KLEMS, and The
Parents of Modern Growth Accounting and Index
Numbers: W. Erwin Diewert and Dale W. Jorgenson.
Bill Nordhaus (Yale & NBER) will deliver the Guy H. Orcutt Memorial Lecture.
We seek papers and participation from people
interested in finding ways to push the existing
data as far possible to capture the realities of
global integration. The 2008 World Congress
deliberations also are an opportunity to propose
and prioritize recommendations on how to improve economic statistics.
Among the confirmed expert attendees are:
SNA panel session:
Carol Carson (Project Manager - SNA Update) and
Anne Harrison (Editor - SNA Update), Brent
Moulton (BEA), Karen Wilson (Statistics Canada), and Peter Hill (Consultant)
EU KLEMs panel session:
Bart van Ark, Marcel Timmer, and Robert Inklaar
(U. of Groningen) and Mary OMahony (U. of Birmingham).
Special lectures:
include Bert Balk (Statistics Netherlands and
Erasmus U.), Susanto Basu (Boston College &
NBER), Erik Brynjolfsson (MIT & NBER), Erwin
Diewert (UBC & NBER), Richard Freeman (Harvard &
NBER), Susan Houseman (Upjohn Institute), Dale
Jorgenson (Harvard & NBER), Masahiro Kuroda
(Economic and Social Research Institute, Japanese
Cabinet Office and Keio Univ.), Steve Landefeld
(BEA), Catherine Mann (Brandeis), Leonard
Nakamura (Philadelphia Fed.), Ariel Pakes
(Harvard & NBER), Paul Schreyer (OECD), Katherine
Shaw (Stanford & NBER), Gary Solon (Michigan
State U. & NBER), and Bart van Ark (U. of
Groningen). Ephraim Leibtag of the US Department
of Agriculture will open the Congress.
Possible paper topics
Outsourcing, off shoring, FDI, trade;
Food price measurement in CPI, supply chain links;
Energy shocks, global warming, and paradigm shifts;
The links between import and producer prices;
Identifying imported inputs and their contributions;
Trade within multinational corporations;
Service sector output and trade;
The dynamics of macro labor adjustment;
Alternative definitions of the quantity of labor;
Measurement of labor compensation;
Labors income share;
Measuring networked commodities;
Treatment of durables and inventories;
Treatment of R&D;
The measurement of medical output;
Measurement in owner occupied housing; real estate;
Collection and use of data by monetary authorities;
Uses of Call Report or fair mortgage lending data;
International trade in intangible assets or their services;
Measurement of output in the nonprofit sector;
Measurement of household production and welfare;
Alternative measures of the output of nations;
Capital, capital services measurement, depreciation;
System of National Accounts (SNA) issues;
The L to KL to KLE to KLEM to KLEMS;
Papers using EU-KLEMS data (www.euklems.net);
Scanner data, receipts data, diary data, RFID data;
Price adjustment processes;
Decompositions of economic growth and productivity;
Dealing with new and evolving goods and services;
Index number formulae, hedonics.
HOW TO ATTEND:
To apply to attend, send an e-mail by Monday,
February 4, 2008 to Alice Nakamura at
<alice.nakamura_at_ualberta.ca> with (1) your name
and affiliation, (2) a title and abstract if you
wish to present a paper, (3) your relevant areas
of expertise if you are interested in attending
without presenting a paper, (4) what days of the
Congress you would attend if invited (coming for
the whole Congress is best, given its purpose),
and (5) whether you can cover your travel or
hotel room (the Congress hotel is $269 per night
plus tax). (Filling our room block each night is
crucial; this lets us have the meeting space
without cost.) If you require Congress travel
funds to attend, please state that on submission of your request to attend.
DECISIONS ON SUBMISSIONS:
will be sent out by Monday, February 18, 2008.
Those whose papers are accepted for presentation
at the Congress will then need to send their
papers to Alice Nakamura by Monday April 14 so
that the discussants have time to prepare their
remarks. There will be conference volumes, but
authors are free to publish their papers elsewhere.
For those able to help with their own travel and
hotel costs, or by funding, say, one or more
sessions or a special lunch or dinner, this will
be acknowledged on the program and Congress website (forthcoming).
The Organizing Committee
Paul Armknecht (consultant; formerly with IMF),
Bill Alterman (BLS), Andy Baldwin (Statistics
Canada), Susanto Basu* (Boston College & NBER),
George Beelen (Statistics Canada), Nicholas Bloom
(Stanford & NBER), Richard Freeman* (Harvard
Univ. & NBER), John Greenlees (BLS), David
Fenwick (UK Office of National Statistics, ONS),
Dennis Fixler (BEA), Mike Harper (BLS), Robert
Hill (Univ. of Graz), Susan Houseman* (Upjohn
Institute), Steve Landefeld* (BEA), Ephraim
Leibtag* (US Dept. of Agriculture), Catherine
Mann (Brandeis), Alice Nakamura* (Univ. of
Alberta), Emi Nakamura (Columbia, N.Y. Fed. &
NBER), Leonard Nakamura* (Philadelphia Fed.),
Koji Nomura* (Keio Univ.), Marc Prudhomme
(Statistics Canada), Hak Pyo (Seoul Univ.),
Marshall Reinsdorf (BEA), Ken Ryder (National
Academy of Public Admin), Someshwar Rao*
(Industry Canada), Paul Schreyer (OECD),
Katherine Shaw* (Stanford Univ.), Mick Silver
(IMF), Jón Steinsson (Columbia, N.Y. Fed. &
NBER), Jianmin Tang (Industry Canada), Ludwig
von Auer (Univ. of Trier), Christina Wang*
(Boston Fed.), and Karen Wilson (Statistics
Canada). * Designates a Congress Executive Committee Member.
The Sponsoring Organizations (to which there may be additions)
Industry Canada
National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)
The SLOAN Foundation
University of Alberta School of Business
US Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA)
US Department of Agriculture (USDA)
W.E. Upjohn Institute
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Received on Thu Dec 20 2007 - 16:34:42 EST
