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“What is measured becomes visible; what is visible can be monitored; and what is monitored can be improved”.These words were left ringing in the ears of more than 65 gender statistics experts last week as the final speaker at the UNECE gender statistics work session took the floor in Vilnius,…
Source: UNECE Statistical Database (www.unece.org/stats/data), Eurostat, CISSTAT and national statistics In 2015, in the United States gross domestic product (GDP) increased by 2.4 per cent compared to the previous year – the same growth rate as in 2014. In the European Union (EU), GDP…
It is commonly known that global exports exceed global imports. How is it possible? Is it due to the growing exports of goods to the moon? No, it is due to difficulties in capturing global production and trade flows.Businesses once largely confined their production activities to the national…
Recent humanitarian crises combined with continuing globalization have brought the topic of international migration to the forefront of news reports around the world. The effects of cross-border migration are wide ranging and affect both migrants themselves and many non-migrants. As a result,…
We are all more or less familiar with the concept of inflation - rising prices that reduce our purchasing power. The consumer price index (CPI) is the most commonly used measure of consumer price inflation. It measures the average price change of goods and services purchased by households for…
Most of us probably still remember the time when during a family car trip the hard-to-fold windshield-sized paper map was drawn out to determine which way to turn next, or when everyone in the back seat was instructed to keep their eyes open for the next gas station. Now, many of us are used to…
Earlier this month in New York, countries from around the world expressed their appreciation for the work done by UNECE to improve official statistics for the measurement of climate change. Almost twenty countries spoke at the 47th session of the United Nations Statistical Commission, the global…
The percentage of women in parliament has increased across the UNECE region over the last ten years, bringing the average in UNECE member countries from 19% in 2005 to 25% in 2015.  In 2015, women accounted for at least 10% of members in all national parliaments. In 2005, 9 countries were…
Entrepreneurship is a source of innovation and productivity in the global economy. In the 20th century, economic development has relied on big businesses and mass production. Now, smaller firms and creative networks of experts provide knowledge-driven goods and services. In addition, the…
How to measure the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)? What implications will technological advancements have on the production of statistics? These are two of the topics that will be discussed by the statistical community next week in New York (8-11 March) at the 47th session of the United…
The world is increasingly global. Think about music, movies, fashion, technology…the list goes on. The products we buy are often manufactured in distant places, and while we may not realize it, they often consist of parts developed, produced and assembled in different parts of the world.…
Between 2003 and 2013, the total number of fatalities in road traffic accidents decreased by more than 30 per cent in the UNECE region, reaching 108,857 in 2013. This trend was particularly pronounced between 2007 and 2010 with average annual decreases of more than 8 per cent. Beyond this…
Of the 37 UNECE member countries that reported average monthly wages and annual consumer price indices for 2013 and 2014, 32 saw an increase in real wages in 2014. Real wages only decreased in the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain and Ukraine in this period. With the exception of Ukraine,…
“The Paris climate conference, COP21, seeks to deliver a clear pathway to meet the climate challenge and a system to help us measure and increase progress until we get the job done”, says Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (…
Source: UNECE Statistical database www.unece.org/stats/data After trending downward in 2013 and 2014 inflation in most European economies has remained below 1 per cent through 2015, as measured by the 12 month rates of change of the consumer price index (CPI). Several countries have…
Traditional employment statistics, such as unemployment rates and labour force participation rates, have long been produced by national statistics offices, but they provide only limited information about a country’s labour market situation. Policymakers, governments and researchers have…
“Better data, better lives” is the theme selected for the World Statistics Day on 20 October 2015 by the United Nations General Assembly. It is a day when the international community will be celebrating Official Statistics, data that are behind an incredible amount of information we digest daily…
The commitment for economically advanced countries to provide 0.7% of their gross national income (GNI) in the form of official development assistance (ODA) has been reaffirmed in many international agreements over the yearsi . It has been used to measure progress under Millennium Development Goal…
Many of us might not be familiar with the term statistical business register (SBR), however, a large amount of the economic information we digest daily relies on it. This includes statistics about establishments and enterprises and their activities, business demography and entrepreneurship…
The push for a global agreement on climate change is increasing like the pace of a high-speed train. The next stop is the Paris Climate Conference in December, where 196 countries need to get on board the new climate agreement. To navigate climate action along those tracks, policy makers will…
Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain are some of the UNECE member countries that were most severely affected by the 2008 financial crisis. Amongst these countries, Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain all experienced modest employment growth in 2014 compared to the year before.Employment grew…
In the Republic of Moldova some 309,000 people are either employers or own account workers (self-employed without employees).  Only 120,000 of these (39 per cent) are women.  Currently, this is the closest we can come to measuring the phenomenon of entrepreneurship, which in fact is a…
So much has been said and written about Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), but now it is time to act. SDGs will be adopted by the General Assembly in September 2015 and the Statistical Community is expected to start measuring SDGs as of 2016. The universal character of these 17 goals means…
“Global retailers, brands and manufacturers who have outsourced their production have turned economics on its head”, says Professor Gary Gereffi, one of the experts that will gather in Geneva on 7-9 July for a meeting on Measuring Global Production hosted by UNECE . Leading statistical experts…
Travelling – be it for work or holiday – and long distance commuting has become part of everyday life for many people. You might live in France but work in Switzerland, or your colleague may fly to Rome every week-end to visit the family. Cross-border commuting belts are growing in size and are…