Globalisation and Official Statistics

Questions of globalisation in connection with official statistics are discussed both from a methodological and empirical point of view. The increase in cross-border interactions and the growing openness of national economies pose major challenges for ‘national’ statistics. This is particularly evident in the difficulties in recording value chains to produce goods and services across many countries. Often, parts of the production no longer take place in the headquarters country of a group of companies, but in countries where the group expects to gain economic advantages through lower labour costs, environmental regulations, or taxes. From an economic perspective, there are several positive aspects of value chains. For example, companies can use their comparative advantages to focus on specific production stages instead of having to provide capacity for the entire production process. Moreover, additional jobs are usually created for the enterprises involved in a value chain. Finally value chains offer the possibility of direct technology transfer to emerging and developing countries. Globalisation was one of the driving forces behind the update of the System of National Accounts (2008 SNA), the internationally agreed statistical standard for compiling national accounts. The same applied to the European System of Accounts (ESA 2010). Looking at the consultation process currently underway for the update of these statistical standards, this still appears to be valid. Accordingly, the “Joint Globalization Task Team” has been established for the project “Towards the 2025 SNA” to deal with globalisation and the treatment of multinational enterprises and special purpose entities. In contrast to the “SNA approach” of delineating institutional units by geographic affiliation and grouping them into domestic sectors, the “corporate group approach” also assembles institutional units but based on the concept of control. Whether the Corona pandemic and the Ukrainian war will turn back the clock on globalisation is an open question. But it shows with unusual clarity how fragile global value chains are, how quickly borders can be closed and freedom of travel restricted, and how reflexively several countries issued export bans on goods and services. Ideas like self-sufficiency, bringing back value chains or nationalising economic policy have broader support than they did some time ago. International cooperation has a bad reputation. The fear of being dependent on trading partners is growing.