Macroeconomic Measurement Versus Macroeconomic Theory

Ideally, scientific theory and scientific measurement should develop in tandem, but in recent years this has not been the case in economics. There used to be a time when leading economists, or their students, established or led statistical offices and took care that the measurements were consistent with the theory (and vice versa). Not anymore. Macroeconomic theorists and macroeconomic statisticians do not even speak the same language any longer. They do use the same words, such as ‘consump...