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Working Paper
Beyond the Streetlight: Economic Measurement in the Division of Research and Statistics at the Federal Reserve
This paper was written for the academic conference held in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Division of Research and Statistics (R&S) of the Federal Reserve Board. The work of the Federal Reserve turns strongly on empirical efforts to understand the structure and state of the economy, and R&S can be thought of as operating a large factory for discovering and developing data and analytical methods to provide evidence relevant to the mission of the Board. This paper, as signaled by its title, illustrates how the measurement research component of the R&S factory often looks far beyond ...
Discussion Paper
The Increasing Deflationary Impact of Consumer Digital Access Services
Although U.S. consumer price statistics are prone to upward bias, they remain useful if imperfect accounting has a known and stable effect (Boskin et al., 1998; Moulton, 2018). For example, monetary authorities may set a target for
Discussion Paper
Recent Trends in Communications Equipment Prices
In a recently published working paper, Prices for Communications Equipment: Rewriting the Record, the authors of this note provide new estimates of prices for communications equipment for the period 1963 to 2009. In this note we extend those results through 2014 and comment briefly on the implications for high-tech innovation, production, and investment.
Journal Article
Industrial production and capacity utilization: the 2001 annual revision
In late 2001, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System published the annual revision of its index of industrial production and the related measures of capacity and capacity utilization for the period January 1992 to October 2001. The updated measures reflect the incorporation of newly available, more-comprehensive source data and the introduction of improved methods for compiling a few series. ; Measured fourth quarter to fourth quarter, increases in rates of industrial output and capacity have been revised downward from rates previously reported for 1999 and 2000. The revision ...
Working Paper
ICT Asset Prices : Marshaling Evidence into New Measures
This paper is a companion to our recent paper, "ICT Prices and ICT Services: What do they tell us about Productivity and Technology?" It provides the sources and methods used to construct national accounts-style price deflators for the major components of ICT investment--communications equipment, computer equipment, and software--that were presented and analyzed in that paper. The ICT equipment measures described herein were also used in Byrne, Fernald, and Reinsdorf (2016). This paper is a companion to our recent paper, "ICT Services and their Prices: What do they tell us about ...
Discussion Paper
Own-Account IT Equipment Investment
This note considers a puzzle: why has information technology (IT) equipment investment in the National income and Product Accounts (NIPAs) been so weak since 2007 at the same time that financial reports indicate massive increases in capital expenditures by IT service companies?