THE STATISTICAL MEASUREMENT OF SERVICES: RECENT ACHIEVEMENTS AND REMAINING CHALLENGES

Services are increasingly important in the output of modern economies and are increasingly traded internationally. These patterns are observed in the generality of both 'developed' and 'developing' economies. This paper discusses the policy needs to understand the impact of services on the performance of modern economies, some measurement problems, and actions undertaken by international organisations to address these issues. It concludes that development work on services prices and volumes is fundamental to measurement of growth, and there is a need to engage more countries in the development of their service statistics with improved co-ordination of technical assistance. Copyright © 2007 The Authors; Journal compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.