william the wie
Gold Member
- Nov 18, 2009
- 16,667
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This is not the usual attack on UE or hedonics but a serious question. The stats put out by public and private bodies have a lot of problems such as not knowing for sure the error rate because of budget constraints. This tends to be a lesser problem with private sources because the customers will not continue to pay for non-actionable intelligence. And there is the secondary constraint of getting the computers needed to figure out what the collected data means when 535 members of congress have input on the purchase.
There are basically three problems with the use of private source data:
It has to be available on the market. Value Line and other sources for actionable data on stocks are not cheap and stocks are the fourth or fifth biggest capital market.
It has to be accurate. Case-Shiller was adapted after the meltdown and it has major problems such as not dealing with amenities, location and sq. footage. However it was such a huge improvement on the previous rental equivalent model (there may be other terms used in your sources) that it has become almost universally accepted. Real estate is the largest capital market.
It has to be actionable. It is relatively cheap and easy to get most types of insurance, particularly if you don't need it. Insurance/pensions may be one of the biggest capital markets out there. However it is only in the last 4-5 years that anything like comparable policies have been available for anything in insurance.
Government stats tend to be treated as a big step down from private sources. The Fed, treasury and congress all use different models to figure out what policies to implement. So here is my question, which I have also asked on other boards, how misleading are these economic stats?
There are basically three problems with the use of private source data:
It has to be available on the market. Value Line and other sources for actionable data on stocks are not cheap and stocks are the fourth or fifth biggest capital market.
It has to be accurate. Case-Shiller was adapted after the meltdown and it has major problems such as not dealing with amenities, location and sq. footage. However it was such a huge improvement on the previous rental equivalent model (there may be other terms used in your sources) that it has become almost universally accepted. Real estate is the largest capital market.
It has to be actionable. It is relatively cheap and easy to get most types of insurance, particularly if you don't need it. Insurance/pensions may be one of the biggest capital markets out there. However it is only in the last 4-5 years that anything like comparable policies have been available for anything in insurance.
Government stats tend to be treated as a big step down from private sources. The Fed, treasury and congress all use different models to figure out what policies to implement. So here is my question, which I have also asked on other boards, how misleading are these economic stats?