IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/pal/palchp/978-1-349-19340-0_2.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

The Development of Economic Statistics as an Influence on Theory and Policy

In: National Income and Economic Progress

Author

Listed:
  • Alec Cairncross

Abstract

Colin Clark’s most important contribution has undoubtedly been to economic statistics. He showed us, so to speak, how to play with statistics: how, by means of a little speculative arithmetic, to mix statistics that were firm with statistics that were far from firm and arrive at conclusions of major importance in resolving issues of economic policy. He opened up a world of the past in which one could still think in magnitudes when the quantitative data were fragmentary and uncertain, building the bricks of economic history out of straws in the wind. At the same time he helped to revolutionise governmental use of statistics for current policy by encouraging the estimation of economic aggregates, recognising that the pitfalls of such estimations were much the same as those involved in piecing together the statistical fragments of past centuries.

Suggested Citation

  • Alec Cairncross, 1988. "The Development of Economic Statistics as an Influence on Theory and Policy," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Duncan Ironmonger & J. O. N. Perkins & Tran Hoa (ed.), National Income and Economic Progress, chapter 1, pages 11-20, Palgrave Macmillan.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-349-19340-0_2
    DOI: 10.1007/978-1-349-19340-0_2
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Suzuki, Tomo, 2003. "The accounting figuration of business statistics as a foundation for the spread of economic ideas," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 28(1), pages 65-95, January.
    2. Suzuki, Tomo, 2007. "Accountics: Impacts of internationally standardized accounting on the Japanese socio-economy," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 32(3), pages 263-301, April.
    3. Suzuki, Tomo, 2007. "A history of Japanese accounting reforms as a microfoundation of the democratic socio-economy: Accountics Part II," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 32(6), pages 543-575, August.
    4. Suzuki, Tomo, 2003. "The epistemology of macroeconomic reality: The Keynesian Revolution from an accounting point of view," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 28(5), pages 471-517, July.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-349-19340-0_2. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.palgrave.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.