ESCoE recently hosted the 38th IARIW General Conference the biennial meeting of the International Association for Research in Income and Wealth. The event took place at King’s Business School on 26 – 30 August 2024.
The IARIW advances knowledge on income and wealth for better measurement and outcomes. Delegates came to King’s from across the world to present research and engage in discussions on the definition, measurement, and analysis of national income and wealth. Some of the topics included in this years’ conference were: the distribution of income and wealth and poverty, and the development of systems of economic and social accounting and their use for economic policy.
As conference host, ESCoE had a prominent role in organising the opening plenary session. There was a welcome from Sir Ian Diamond, National Statistician, followed by a discussion of the upcoming revision to the System of National Accounts. This included a keynote from Sir Robert Chote (Chair of the UK Statistics Authority) and presentations from Richard Heys, (Deputy Chief Economist of the Office for National Statistics, UK), Catherine Van Rompaey (Chair of the Inter-Secretariat Working Group on National Accounts, World Bank) and Martin Weale (Chair of the National Statistician’s Committee for Advice on Standards for Economic Statistics, King’s College London and ESCoE).
“We need a system which reflects the social costs of many of the by-products of human activity and my sense is that the new SNA is really only beginning to address that.” – Martin Weale
The second plenary was a panel session on “metrics for growth”, chaired by Rebecca Riley (ESCoE Director and Professor of Practice in Economics at King’s Business School). This led with a contribution from Bart Van Ark (The Productivity Institute) who started by asking how statistical agencies might build on advances in productivity measurement already well-established by the academic community. He also pointed to the need for a broader set of metrics in developing a narrative for growth. Sonia Carrera from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), then focused on recent innovations in the measurement of public sector productivity. Paul Schreyer (former OECD Chief Statistician) focused on new approaches to productivity measurement, highlighting the limitations of the SNA, and finally, Anna Leach (Chief Economist at the Institute of Directors) provided a business perspective.
“The idea here is to consider more specifically what we should be measuring in the interest of developing evidence-based policy solutions to support productivity growth. Are we measuring the right economic concepts?” – Rebecca Riley
Conference plenary sessions also included a “Ruggles Memorial Lecture” on income volatility from Stephen Jenkins (London School of Economics) and sessions on measuring wellbeing for policy and on improving measurement of the distributions of household income.
Following the traditional model of IARIW conferences, discussants presented the author(s) work.
Other ESCoE contributions:
- John Lourenze Poquiz (ESCoE and King’s Business School) presented his PhD work on measuring depreciation of intangibles using search volume data. He also discussed a paper on the role of public intangibles on externalities of social infrastructure in Japan, authored by Tsutomu Miyagawa (Gakushuin University), Kazuyasu Kawasaki (Chuo University), Takayuki Ishikawa (Rissho University) and Yuya Iwasaki (Kanagawa University).
- ESCoE work on accounting for produced environmental assets from Josh Martin (ESCoE and Bank of England) and Rachel Soloveichik (ESCoE and U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis) was discussed by Aram Hawa (Office for National Statistics). A second paper by Josh and Rachel, plus Leonard Nakamura (ESCoE and Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia) on types of capital and their measurement was discussed by Carl Obst (Institute of Development of Environmental-Economic Accounting).
- ESCoE’s Rebecca Riley and Mary O’Mahony along with Ralf Martin (Imperial College London and the Centre for Economic Performance at LSE) organised a session on productive and inclusive net zero. The session was chaired on behalf of ESCoE by Joe Grice (ESCoE and Visiting Professor at King’s College London) and Paul Ekins (ESCoE and UCL). Joe and Paul went on to present their own ESCoE work, in the Wednesday evening poster session. This work explains the progress made in compiling National Accounts and Natural Capital Accounts for the UK.
- ESCoE work from Lena Kilian, Anne Owen (ESCoE and University of Leeds) and Rutger Hoekstra (ESCoE and Leiden University) on comparing emissions embodied in imports from four global MRIO databases was discussed by Robert Inklaar (ESCoE and University of Groningen).
- Josh Martin discussed work from Florian Trouvain on technology adoption, innovation, and inequality in a global world.
- Rebecca Riley discussed a paper on long term care insurance, formal care, informal care and bequests, focusing on Japan. The paper authors were Charles Yuji Horioka (Kobe University), Emin Gahramanov (American University of Sharjah) and Xueli Tang (Deakin University).
- Mary O’Mahony (ESCoE and Professor of Applied Economics at King’s Business School) discussed a paper from Bank of England researchers on productive investment.
Papers presented are available in the conference programme. Session slides will be available through the IARIW website in the coming weeks.
The Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence (ESCoE) brings a research-led approach to measuring the economy. Established in 2017 with the support of the UK Office for National Statistics (ONS), ESCoE is a hub of world-leading expertise, supporting cultural change in the delivery of economic statistics.
ESCoE will also host a joint conference with the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Centre for Applied Economic Research on 25-26 November 2024 at UNSW Sydney, Australia. This will be free to attend and held in person. Find out more.