Timeline of economic statistics

This is a timeline of economic statistics.

How the timeline was built
The initial version of the timeline was written by Issa Rice and Vipul Naik.

is available.

What the timeline is still missing

 * Some stuff on Chinese GDP figures and official processes and question marks around it
 * United States Census and United States Economic Census
 * Japan statistics and censuses starting 1721 (?)
 * some historical details of ICP at
 * """Basic work on the need for purchasing power parities as currency conversion factors began with the seminal work of Gilbert and Kravis for the OEEC in 1954 and the subsequent work of Gilbert and Associates (1958). These two studies demonstrate the fact that there can be a considerable gap between the official exchange rates and purchasing power parities, and therefore the need for research on the computation of PPPs for different currencies. This has led to the eventual establishment of the International Comparison Project (ICP) at the University of Pennsylvania by Kravis, Heston, Summers and Kenessey. The work by Kravis et al. (1975 and 1978) was instrumental in establishing the procedures and guidelines for undertaking international comparisons. The report of Kravis, Heston and Summers (1982) on Phase III of the ICP, may be considered as a definitive account of the standard procedures of the ICP. The ICP had been upgraded subsequently from the status of a project to a program due to the increased coverage of more than 65 countries in Phase IV. The publication of the Handbook of the International Comparison Programme (UN, 1992), is another major source for the procedures recommended for use in international comparisons. There are several OECD publications, all with the title "Purchasing Power Parities and Real Expenditures" (OECD 1987, 1996 and 1999), that deal with procedures underlying PPP computation. Similar publications are regularly published by Eurostat."""
 * Add some events of the period when exchange rates were used directly: "Before PPPs became available, exchange rates were used to make international comparisons of GDP." (p4) It would be good to document what sort of comparison programs/tables were produced before PPPs took off.
 * SUSENAS (Survey Sosial Ekonomi Nasional i.e. National Social Economy Survey; Indonesia): cited in (p28);

From Coyle:


 * Wesley J. Mitchell's statement about how GDP was critical to financing and justifying war efforts
 * May 1946: First set of recommendations for UN statistics, a a meeting of the Committee of Statistical Experts at Hunter College in New York.
 * Reinforce references for Marshall Plan using GDP
 * Jan Tinbergen's work on GDP in the context of the Netherlands
 * PARIS21
 * 1996 Boskin Commission

When were specific concepts introduced


 * Purchasing power parity (PPP)
 * International Geary-Khamis dollar
 * Chain-weighting
 * Laspeyres (?)
 * Penn effect and its cousins