How do you measure the money supply?

Inflation is a general increase in the supply of money at a faster rate than the supply of goods and services to purchase. It is usually measured by changes in the Consumer Price Index. Could inflation be measured directly by measuring the money supply? The money supply is measured in terms of the number of dollars. [...]

Trying to measure poverty directly rather than inferring it

What is poverty? How much stuff do people have to have before they are not considered poor? There is no iron clad definition of poverty. How do you measure the preponderance of something that is ill-defined? The lack of definition has not stopped people from measuring something they call poverty, or the poverty rate, without [...]

Is Samuelson still right about the ability of leading economic indicators to lead? or indicate?

This week the Conference Board’s leading economic indicators were released in the US and Canada. Both forecast, according to reports, somewhat weak, economic growth in the months ahead. Nobel winning economist Paul Samuelson quipped in 1966 that “Wall Street indexes predicted nine out of the last five recessions.” Are they any better today? Are the [...]

Throwing out water quality data

With real time measurements, exception reports are often the most useful indicator. This seems to have been forgotten by one government water quality inspector.

What is the crime rate? Is it going up or down?

Are crime rates going up or down? There are more and more criminal offences on the books. but one senior government official does not believe his government’s crime statistics.

Inflation or deflation? It depends how you measure it.

The Fed is afraid if deflation. Investors fear inflation. And there are suspicions about how inflation is measured.

“We have no reliable way to measure counterfactuals”

Social scientists such as economists cannot not measure what would happen if they had not executed some policy, such as an economic stimulus. And while business can gain from experimental methods used in the hard sciences, it is doubtful whether social scientists ever will.

GDP a “a misleading indicator of economic progress”

A Singapore MP points out the weakness of the GDP, and we explain why background information is as or more important that the measurements themselves.

Complaint numbers can be misleading

Customer complaint numbers can mislead unless you know how they were generated

misLeading Indicators: How to reliably measure your business

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