The Economic Measurement Research Institute (EMRI), which is supported by the National Science Foundation, promotes research on the measurement of prices, output, labor market outcomes, technology, and related concepts, as well as demonstration projects that will lead to the implementation of new approaches to the creation of official economic statistics. EMRI projects will produce cutting edge research on economic measurement and new methods for leveraging large-scale “naturally occurring data”—i.e., data created by businesses, households, non-profit institutions, and governments during the course of their normal activities—for economic measurement and analysis. This research targets the creation of the knowledge and methods needed to re-engineer the existing system of official statistics so that the methods for data collection, construction, and dissemination are based on 21st century information technology to effectively measure the 21st century economy. The research will produce new methods for capturing how fundamental changes in technologies affect economic outcomes for households and businesses, and how technological change affects the structure of the economy and its overall performance.
The EMRI will initiate and support research collaborations among federal statistical agencies, the business community, and academic experts in order to advance the development of new economic measures with an emphasis on tracking the economic effects of technical change and scientific advances.
The EMRI is currently supporting research in five areas:
1) How measurement of retail spending and inflation can be redesigned to make use of item-level transactions data to value technologically driven and other quality changes embedded in retail goods.
2) Integration of administrative and American Community Survey data to produce new statistics on the gig economy.
3) Use of new information on income statements of businesses to lay the groundwork for improving the measurement of intangible capital to account for investments in R&D.
4) Linking of data from the NSF Business R&D and Innovation Survey to other business data housed at the Census Bureau to generate new estimates of the contribution of R&D to productivity growth in manufacturing.
5) Constructing a disaggregated consumer spending matrix for the US economy that will describe how US households distribute their spending across regions and industries.
Co-Directors
Katharine G. Abraham is a Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland. Her research ranges widely in labor economics, including labor market decisions of older Americans, the impact of government policies on labor markets, and the measurement of economic activity.
Matthew Shapiro is a Professor of Economics and a Research Professor at the Survey Research Center at the University of Michigan. His interests range widely in applied macroeconomics and the use of administrative data resources to study economic behavior and improve the quality of national economic statistics. He is the past chair of both the American Economic Association's Committee on Economic Statistics and the Federal Economic Statistics Advisory Committee.
Dylan Rassier, the Executive Director of EMRI, is an economist and CPA whose primary research interests are economic accounting and the measurement of economic activity. He previously served as Assistant Director of Economic Analysis at the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board and as Chief of National Accounts Analysis and Research at the US Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). At the BEA, he led teams working to integrate improvements from measurement research into the official US national accounts.
Supported by the National Science Foundation grant #2537470
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