Measurement in Economics: a Handbook aims to serve as a source, reference, and teaching supplement for quantitative empirical economics, inside and outside the laboratory. Covering an extensive range of fields in economics: econometrics, actuarial science, experimental economics, index theory, national accounts, and economic forecasting, it is the first book that takes measurement in economics as its central focus. It shows how different and sometimes distinct fields share the same kind of measurement problems and so how the treatment of these problems in one field can function as a guidance in other fields. This volume provides comprehensive and up-to-date surveys of recent developments in economic measurement, written at a level intended for professional use by economists, econometricians, statisticians and social scientists.
The approach is multi-disciplinary, chapters are written by experts in different fields: econometrics, economic policy, economics, history of science, metrology, and philosophy of science. One of its main results is that it bridges traditionally two distinct approaches: Representational Theory of Measurement with its close connections to experimental economics measurement in a laboratory and Econometrics with its long and rich history of dealing with passive observations measurement outside a laboratory. This bridge is built by expanding the Representational Theory of Measurement to include measurement practices in Econometrics, and other fields of economics.
The central measurement problem is to obtain reliable quantitative information about economic phenomena. The organization of this Handbook follows the framework that is given by splitting this measurement problem into three parts: invariance, accuracy and precision.