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Measuring the Progress of Societies Presentation: Enrico Giovannini OECD Chief Statistician Discussant: Rosemary Marcuss Deputy Director of the Bureau of Economic Analysis US Department of Commerce

Event Description:

How can we know whether our societies are progressing or regressing? Is economic growth all we need to make our societies better off? And how can we evaluate the sustainability of our current trends?

In the midst of a global crisis that is making our world much more vulnerable than we thought, several people are questioning whether the measures currently used to assess the progress of our societies, such as GDP, are really helpful to drive policies that are supposed to increase well-being of current and future generations. Several initiatives, including the “Stiglitz Commission” established by the French President N. Sarkozy, have launched to develop better measures of societal progress and to replace, or complement, classical economic indicators.

During the event, Prof. Giovannini will present the draft conclusions of the Stiglitz Commission, as well as the key messages emerging from the OECD-hosted Global Project on “Measuring the progress of societies”. The main implications emerging from these initiatives for statistical work and for policy making will be presented and discussed.

Biographies:

Enrico Giovannini has served as the Director of the Statistics Directorate and Chief Statistician of the OECD since 2001.  Mr. Giovannini has published and edited widely on applied econometrics, statistical analysis and national accounts.  He is an economist and Full Professor of economic statistics at the University of Rome “Tor Vergata.”  Under his leadership, in 2001 the OECD launched a new statistical strategy and reinforced its role in the international market of statistical information. More recently, he launched the Global Project, hosted by the OECD, on “Measuring the Progress of Societies”. He currently serves on several committees of the United Nations, European Union and other international organizations. He is member of the Commission established by President Sarkozy on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress and chairs the Global Council of the World Economic Forum on “Benchmarking Progress in Societies”. Mr. Giovannini holds a degree in Economics from the University of Rome “La Sapienza.”

Rosemary Marcuss has been Deputy Director of the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) of the Department of Commerce since she joined the agency in 1998.  Before that, she served for fifteen years as the Assistant Director for Tax Analysis of the U.S. Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Before joining CBO, Rosemary worked at Data Resources, Inc. (DRI) in Washington, D.C.  She worked as an economist with responsibility for overseeing the use by the Executive Office of the President of the DRI macroeconomic forecasting model of the U.S. economy. Rosemary holds a PhD in economics from the University of Maryland.  She was a National Science Foundation fellow during her time at Maryland.