The Effects of Inflation and the Business Cycle on Revisions of Macroeconomic Data

Although national accounts data provide the most comprehensive overview of economic activity, preliminary estimates are subject to much revision before they are regarded as reliable indicators. Oddly enough, the market acts on the preliminary estimates as though they were final and complete. Even though there exists a considerable international literature on the statistical properties of these revisions, little attention has been devoted to the effects of inflation and the business cycle on the size and direction of these early revisions. The aim of this paper is to provide the first known examination of these effects and to identify an optimal policy strategy to ensure the highest quality of data collection. This paper finds the optimal strategy to be a policy of low inflationary economic growth with an inflation target between 0 and 5%.