News from the Committee on National Statistics

Don’t forget to register for the CNSTAT seminar, October 30, 2009 [see attached agenda].

PEOPLE NEWS

>We congratulate Jeanne Brooks-Gunn and Dana Goldman on being elected to membership in the Institute of Medicine. Dr. Brooks-Gunn, Virginia and Leonard Marx Professor of Child Development and Education, Teachers College and College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University, served as a member of the CNSTAT panel that produced the 1995 report, Measuring Poverty—A New Approach. Dr. Goldman, professor and Norman Topping Chair in Medicine and Public Policy, and director, Leonard D. Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, and senior economist, RAND Corp., Los Angeles, is chairing the CNSTAT Workshop on Improving Healthcare Cost Projections for the Medicare Population.

>We congratulate CNSTAT senior program officer Tom Plewes on receiving an individual Distinguished Service Award from the National Academies. Tom has directed close to a dozen consensus panels and workshops since first joining CNSTAT in 2002. The report he oversaw on Measuring Research and Development Expenditures in the U.S. Economy (2005) led to a major new survey, developed cooperatively by the Census Bureau and the NSF Science Resources Statistics Division and first fielded in early 2009—the Business R&D and Innovation Survey (BRDIS).

REPORTS RELEASED

>Data on Federal Research and Development Investments: A Pathway to Modernization, the final report of the Panel on Modernizing the Infrastructure of the National Science Foundation Federal Funds Survey, chaired by Christopher Hill, was publicly released in prepublication format on September 30, 2009. Free PDFs of the report may be downloaded at http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12772. Printed copies will be available shortly.

>Vital Statistics—Summary of a Workshop, a summary of the Workshop on Revitalizing the Nation’s Vital Statistics, chaired by Louise Ryan and held April 30, 2008, was released in printed form on October 8, 2009. Free PDFs of the report may be downloaded at http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12714.

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CNSTAT expresses appreciation to the Board of the American Statistical Association for its endorsement of the committee’s “purple book,” Principles and Practices for a Federal Statistical Agency, Fourth Edition (fourth edition, 2009), as announced in the June 2009 issue of Amstat News. Please let us know if you are interested in ordering copies in bulk, as we can arrange for a discount on the published price of the National Academies Press (see http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12564).

CNSTAT MEETINGS

110th Meeting of the Committee

Friday, October 30, 2009

NAS Keck Center, 500 5^th St, NW, Washington, DC – Room 100

Public Seminar and Reception, 2:00 – 5:00 pm – Please RSVP to cnstat@nas.edu

Topic: CHALLENGES FOR POLICY USES OF ECONOMIC STATISTICS

Abstract: The federal statistical system produces key statistics that are widely used for monitoring the health of the nation's economy and formulating economic policy.  Data users want statistics that are up to date, issued frequently (monthly, if possible), of high quality, and that can indicate turning points in the business cycle—a tall order, indeed.  David Romer, a member of the National Bureau of Economic Research's "Business Cycle Dating Committee," will describe how that committee uses economic indicators to date peaks and troughs denoting expansions and recessions in the U.S. economy, and where the committee would most like to see data improvements made.  A senior official from the administration will discuss how economic statistics are used to determine fiscal policy and what improvements in quality, timeliness, and relevance would be most helpful for this purpose.  Senior managers from the key economic statistics-producing agencies, including the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and the Census Bureau, will offer their perspectives.  Key concerns to be addressed by all speakers are the tradeoffs between timeliness of release and quality (as reflected in the magnitude of revisions) and what new or modified indicators could help predict turning points, such as last year’s financial collapse. 

THE FEDERAL STATISTICAL SYSTEM—
RECOGNIZING ITS CONTRIBUTIONS; MOVING IT FORWARD

Agenda, Posters, Registration List, PowerPoints, and Speaker Bios are available from the
May 8, 2009, Committee on National Statistics and
American Academy of Political and Social Science Symposium

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