Statistics

Balance of payments

Epistemology

Economy

Philosophy

Macroeconomics

Econometrics

Economics

Archaeology

Political science

Official statistics

Geography

Globalization

Data quality

Quality (philosophy)

Service (business)

National accounts

Mathematics

Market economy

Economic statistics

Capital (architecture)

Politics

Review of International Political Economy

Official international economic statistics are generally considered accurate and meaningful gauges of cross-border flows of trade and capital. Most data users also assume that the quality of the underlying data keeps improving over time. Through an extensive review of the national accounting literature, archival research, two dozen interviews with high-level statisticians, and a series of data quality tests, we evaluate this common view for the primary source of data on trade and capital flows: the International Monetary Fund's Balance of Payments (BOP) Statistics. Our assessment paints a less rosy picture: reported figures are far less accurate than they are typically imagined to be and often do not correspond to the theoretical concepts with which users associate them. At the same time, measurement quality deteriorates over time as the transnationalization of economic production gradually undermines the validity of BOP statistics. Our findings raise serious questions about the widespread use of these numbers, with their deceptive pretense to accuracy, in scholarly research and public debate about the international political economy.

Globalization and the growing defects of international economic statistics