Will “happiness” measurements mean anything?

The British and French governments have announced recently that they wish to measure their citizens’ happiness. Presumably once they have measured it they will create government programs to make their voters happier if they do not meet the happiness targets.  This is prompted by concerns that GDP is not a good measure of citizens’ well being. [...]

Good luck to G-20 leaders with their early warning indicators

Leaders at the G-20 meeting in Korea last week agreed they will establish early warning indicators of economic imbalances.  The G20 communiqué said : “We will strengthen multilateral cooperation to promote external sustainability and pursue the full range of policies conducive to reducing excessive imbalances and maintaining current account imbalances at sustainable levels. Persistently large [...]

Stimulus job counts are actually anecdotal macroeconomic estimates

A few weeks ago we wrote about how the US Government Accountability Office slammed US stimulus job creation numbers. Last week the Canadian Auditor General did the same.  Sheila Fraser’s report on the Canadian numbers said (emphasis ours): …the project-level information on jobs included in the quarterly reports was largely anecdotal and did not present [...]