Multi-source statistics:Basic situations and methods

Many National Statistical Institutes (NSIs), especially in Europe, are moving from single‐source statistics to multi‐source statistics. By combining data sources, NSIs can produce more detailed and more timely statistics and respond more quickly to events in society. By combining survey data with already available administrative data and Big Data, NSIs can save data collection and processing costs and reduce the burden on respondents. However, multi‐source statistics come with new problems that need to be overcome before the resulting output quality is sufficiently high and before those statistics can be produced efficiently. What complicates the production of multi‐source statistics is that they come in many different varieties as data sets can be combined in many different ways. Given the rapidly increasing importance of producing multi‐source statistics in Official Statistics, there has been considerable research activity in this area over the last few years, and some frameworks have been developed for multi‐source statistics. Useful as these frameworks are, they generally do not give guidelines to which method could be applied in a certain situation arising in practice. In this paper, we aim to fill that gap, structure the world of multi‐source statistics and its problems and provide some guidance to suitable methods for these problems

An Integrated Database to Measure Living Standards

This study generates an integrated database to measure living standards in Italy using propensity score matching. We follow the recommendations of the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress proposing that income, consumption of market goods and nonmarket activities, and wealth, rather than production, should be evaluated jointly in order to appropriately measure material welfare. Our integrated database is similar in design to the one built for the United States by the Levy Economics Institute to measure the multiple dimensions of well-being. In the United States, as is the case for Italy and most European countries, the state does not maintain a unified database to measure household economic well-being, and data sources about income and employment surveys and other surveys on wealth and the use of time have to be statistically matched. The measure of well-being is therefore the result of a multidimensional evaluation process no longer associated with a single indicator, as is usually the case when measuring gross domestic product. The estimation of individual and social welfare, multidimensional poverty and inequality does require an integrated living standard database where information about consumption, income, time use and subjective well-being are jointly available. With this objective in mind, we combine information available in four different surveys: the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions Survey, the Household Budget Survey, the Time Use Survey, and the Household Conditions and Social Capital Survey. We perform three different statistical matching procedures to link the relevant dimensions of living standards contained in each survey and report both the statistical and economic tests carried out to evaluate the quality of the procedure at a high level of detail

An Integrated Database to Measure Living Standards

This study generates an integrated database to measure living standards in Italy using propensity score matching. We follow the recommendations of the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress proposing that income, consumption of market goods and non-market activities, and wealth, rather than production, should be evaluated jointly in order to appropriately measure material welfare. Our integrated database is similar in design to the one built for the US by the Levy Economics Institute to measure the multiple dimensions of well-being. In the United States, as is the case for Italy and most European countries, the State does not maintain a unified database to measure household economic well-being and data sources about income and employment surveys and other surveys on wealth and the use of time have to be statistically matched. The measure of well-being is therefore the result of a multidimensional evaluation process no longer associated with a single indicator as is usually the case when measuring gross domestic product. The estimation of individual and social welfare, multidimensional poverty and inequality does require an integrated living standard database where information about consumption, income, time use and subjective well-being are jointly available. With this objective in mind, we combine information available in four different surveys: the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions Survey, the Household Budget Survey, the Time Use Survey, and the Household Conditions and Social Capital Survey. We perform three different statistical matching procedures to link the relevant dimensions of living standards contained in each survey and report both the statistical and economic tests carried out to evaluate the quality of the procedure at a high level of detail

Statistical matching and uncertainty analysis in combining household income and expenditure data.

Among the goals of statistical matching, a very important one is the estimation of the joint distribution of variables not jointly observed in a sample survey but separately available from independent sample surveys. The absence of joint information on the variables of interest leads to uncertainty about the data generating model since the available sample information is unable to discriminate among a set of plausible joint distributions. In the present paper a short review of the concept of uncertainty in statistical matching under logical constraints, as well as how to measure uncertainty for continuous variables is presented. The notion of matching error is related to an appropriate measure of uncertainty and a criterion of selecting matching variables by choosing the variables minimizing such an uncertainty measure is introduced. Finally, a method to choose a plausible joint distribution for the variables of interest via iterative proportional fitting algorithm is described. The proposed methodology is then applied to household income and expenditure data when extra sample information regarding the average propensity to consume is available. This leads to a reconstructed complete dataset where each record includes measures on income and expenditure

Environment, equality, and resilience: fiscal policy assessed through General Equilibrium Models

1noWith the financial crisis of 2007 and the COVID-19 epidemic crisis today, the debate on the effectiveness of fiscal policy has been renewed, for which there remains a wide range of views on the strength of macroeconomic effects, the channels through which these effects operate and the different effectiveness on the basis of a country’s starting economic conditions. To ensure the success of the reform effort it is necessary that policy instruments be constantly updated to meet the new challenges. Extensive literature on tax policy, do not take into account the fact that tax policies now have to pursue a number of policy objectives, focusing not only on economic growth but also on redistribution of income, resource allocation and environmental objectives. The present work deals with these three main goals: equity, environment and resilience, analysing the instruments that have frequently emerged in the recent policy debate to provide a different view on the effects of the instruments themselves. The analysis is carried out though General Equilibrium Models. The first chapter deals with the introduction of flat tax in Italy. The political debate within several developed and developing countries questioned over the profitability of introducing a “flat-tax” on households’ income to reduce the tax burden, simplify the tax system and boost the economic growth. The main concern is related to the direct, indirect and induced income redistribution effect that could be generated by the reform of the tax system and thus generate a final impact on income below the forecasts. In this perspective, this study provides a quantification of how the introduction of the flat rate tax on income in Italy could affect the Italian economic system. From the analysis of the theoretical and applied contributions that the literature provides, it is not easy to draw a clear conclusion on the overall effect of a flat-tax system. Above all, it is not so straightforward to determine whether the benefits offset any unwanted effects. In this perspective, this study aims to analyse the economic impact of the tax rates’ reform in Italy, assuming the introduction of a unique tax rate on household income, replacing the present progressive taxation on personal income. The main purpose of the analysis is evaluating the impact of a tax reform considering all the effects that could be generated within the income circular flow moving to a flat tax system. The aim is to contribute to the debate on the flat tax profitability by using household-level data, whose use in the literature seems to be limited on the issue. The analysis is carried out through the Italian Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) for 2016 built for the purpose, where the Households Institutional Sector is broken down by income deciles. The MAC18 Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model developed by the Department of Economics and Law of the University of Macerata is then calibrated according to the new SAM. The CGE model allows providing a realistic and coherent picture of the income circular flow in Italy and allows assessing the direct, indirect, and induced effects of the reform on both macroeconomic variables and income distribution. By this way, the opposite results emerging from the literature can be addressed, as well as the main features and effects of a flat tax in Italy can be highlighted. Countries experiences, indeed, are very different not only for the different choices in terms of flat tax adopted, but also in terms of starting point conditions, which are essential in determining the effects on growth, State revenue and inequality. Three policy scenarios are analysed assuming different tax rates and different hypothesis on the policy funding by the Government. No simulation shows a trade-off between growth and inequality, while a negative effect on real GDP occurs, coupled with an uneven effect on Households disposable income. In the second chapter, to take into account the increasing concern for climate change, the introduction of a carbon tax on productive activities in the USA at the Federal level is envisaged. The study demonstrates that fiscal reforms can be combined with environmental measures, to achieve the complex target represented by economic growth and environmental protection. In this vein, this study evaluates the economic and environmental impact of the reorganisation of federal taxation on corporate and personal income occurred in USA, coupled with the introduction of a carbon tax on economic activities. The analysis is carried out through a dynamic CGE model, to analyse the effects during time, calibrated on a U.S. Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) for 2017 integrated with environmental accounts. The U.S. SAM for 2017 has been built for the purpose, by also integrated it with environmental data, by using the Environmental Protection Agency data on greenhouse gas emissions allocated to economic sectors. The SAM has also been integrated with the full-time equivalent data for each industry, so to look also at the effects on employment of the fiscal policy proposed in the paper. The work demonstrate that the carbon tax can have a twofold objective. On the one side, the carbon tax can relieve the loss of federal revenue following the personal income tax reduction. On the other side, the greenhouse gas tax is not detrimental for growth, on the contrary it may constitute a tax dividend useful to pursue other objectives not only for the environment, but also for health, work and fair taxation. Results indicate that the reduction of personal income tax is more geared to economic growth compared to the reduction of corporate income tax. Moreover, if the personal income tax reduction is financed with the introduction of a carbon tax on economic activities, there is no harm to the economic growth and a benefit for the environment arises. Finally, the third chapter aims at assessing the impact of the policies put in place by the Government to support businesses during crises times so to reduce liquidity constraints and increasing resilience. The approach is twofold: in a first phase, through a general economic equilibrium model the economic impacts of a shock can be assessed, without excluding the effects on other sectors of the economy. Unlike previous works, the effectiveness of the policies implemented by the government and which are likely to improve the liquidity of businesses is assessed through a financial dynamic CGE model, able to capture also the changes in financial assets and liabilities of the Institutional Sectors. Two policies are considered: firstly, the reduction in employers’ social security contributions, aimed at reducing the tax wedge, which has an impact on the economic account component of liquidity. Secondly, the increase in State guarantees granted through the Guarantee Fund for SMEs, which are intended to make it easier to obtain credit and, therefore, to affect the liquidity component linked to bank credit. The second phase of the work involves the integration of CGE model with the main business data, taken from the ORBIS database, so to have the possibility to assess how the sectoral results stemming from the CGE model affect liquidity margins at industry level. The more margins are larger, the more industries are resilient to exogenous shocks that, translating into lower revenues, put pressure on liquidity and solvency. Considering the results from the point of view of the opportunity of implementing a policy, it emerges that some sectors would benefit more from the tax wedge reduction, while others from the increase in State guarantees, depending on the structure of the sector itself. Thus, it would be appropriate to implement policies at sectoral level, to have higher benefit for the whole economic system.openCon la crisi finanziaria del 2007 e l’epidemia di Covid-19 oggi, il dibattito sull’efficacia della politica di bilancio è tornato alla ribalta, e permangono opinioni diverse sugli effetti macroeconomici, sui canali attraverso i quali tali effetti operano e sulla diversa efficacia della politica in base alle condizioni economiche iniziali di un paese. Per garantire il successo dello sforzo di riforma è necessario aggiornare costantemente gli strumenti politici per far fronte alle nuove sfide. Le politiche fiscali è necessario che perseguano, oggi, una serie di obiettivi strategici, concentrandosi non solo sulla crescita economica, ma anche sulla redistribuzione del reddito, sull’allocazione delle risorse e sugli obiettivi ambientali. La tesi riguarda questi tre obiettivi principali: equità, ambiente e resilienza, analizzando gli strumenti che sono spesso emersi nel recente dibattito politico per fornire una visione diversa degli effetti degli strumenti stessi. Il primo capitolo riguarda l’introduzione di una flat tax in Italia. Il dibattito politico in diversi paesi sviluppati e in via di sviluppo si è concentrato sull’efficacia dell’introduzione di una flat tax e l’argomento principale riguarda l’effetto di redistribuzione diretta, indiretta e indotta del reddito che potrebbe derivare dalla riforma del sistema fiscale, generando così un impatto finale sul reddito inferiore alle previsioni. In questa prospettiva, il presente studio fornisce una quantificazione del modo in cui l’introduzione dell’imposta ‘piatta’ sul reddito in Italia potrebbe incidere sul sistema economico italiano. Dall’analisi dei contributi teorici e applicati forniti dalla letteratura non è facile trarre una conclusione chiara sull’effetto complessivo di un sistema di imposizione ‘piatta’. Soprattutto, non è così semplice stabilire se i benefici compensino eventuali effetti indesiderati. In questa prospettiva, il presente studio intende analizzare l’impatto economico della riforma delle aliquote fiscali in Italia, ipotizzando l’introduzione di un’aliquota unica sul reddito delle famiglie, in sostituzione dell’attuale tassazione progressiva sul reddito delle persone fisiche. L’obiettivo principale dell’analisi è valutare l’impatto di una riforma fiscale tenendo conto di tutti gli effetti che potrebbero essere generati nell’ambito del flusso circolare del reddito che passa a un regime fiscale forfettario. L’obiettivo è quello di contribuire al dibattito sulla redditività fiscale piatta utilizzando dati a livello di famiglie, il cui utilizzo in letteratura in materia sembra essere limitato. L’analisi è effettuata attraverso la matrice di contabilità sociale italiana (SAM) per il 2016 costruita a tal fine, in cui il settore istituzionale delle famiglie è suddiviso per decili di reddito. Il modello MAC18 Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) sviluppato dal Dipartimento di economia e di diritto dell’Università di Macerata è stato quindi calibrato in base alla nuova SAM. Il modello CGE consente di fornire un quadro realistico e coerente del flusso circolare dei redditi in Italia e di valutare gli effetti diretti, indiretti e indotti della riforma sulle variabili macroeconomiche e sulla distribuzione del reddito. In questo modo, è possibile sia dare una risposta ai risultati opposti che emergono dalla letteratura, sia evidenziare le principali caratteristiche ed effetti di una flat tax in Italia. Le esperienze dei paesi, infatti, sono molto diverse non solo per le diverse scelte in termini di flat tax adottate, ma anche in termini di condizioni di partenza, che sono essenziali per determinare gli effetti sulla crescita, sulle entrate statali e sulla disuguaglianza. Sono analizzati tre scenari politici, ipotizzando aliquote fiscali diverse e ipotesi diverse sul finanziamento delle politiche da parte del governo. Nessuna simulazione mostra un trade-off tra crescita e disuguaglianza, invece si verifica un effetto negativo sul PIL reale, associato a un effetto disuguale sul reddito disponibile delle famiglie. Nel secondo capitolo, per tener conto della crescente preoccupazione per i cambiamenti climatici, è prevista l’introduzione di una tassa sul carbonio a livello federale sulle attività produttive negli Stati Uniti. Lo studio dimostra che le riforme fiscali possono essere combinate con misure ambientali per conseguire il complesso obiettivo rappresentato dalla crescita economica e dalla tutela dell’ambiente. In quest’ottica, il presente studio valuta l’impatto economico e ambientale della riorganizzazione delle imposte federali sui redditi delle società e delle persone fisiche negli Stati Uniti, unitamente all’introduzione di una carbon tax sulle attività economiche. L’analisi è effettuata mediante un modello CGE dinamico, al fine di analizzare gli effetti nel tempo, calibrato su una SAM integrata con conti ambientali. La SAM statunitense per il 2017 è stata costruita a tal fine, integrandola anche con i dati ambientali, utilizzando i dati dell’Agenzia per la protezione dell’ambiente sulle emissioni di gas a effetto serra assegnate ai settori economici. La SAM è stata, inoltre, integrata con i dati di occupazione a tempo pieno equivalente per ciascuna branca, in modo da esaminare anche gli effetti sull’occupazione della politica fiscale proposta nel lavoro. Il lavoro dimostra che la tassa sul carbonio può avere un duplice obiettivo. Da un lato, l’imposta sul carbonio può ridurre la perdita di gettito a livello federale conseguente alla riduzione dell’imposta sul reddito delle persone fisiche. D’altro lato, si dimostra che l’imposta sui gas a effetto serra non è dannosa per la crescita, anzi può costituire un dividendo fiscale utile per perseguire altri obiettivi non solo per l’ambiente, ma anche per la salute, il lavoro e l’equità fiscale. I risultati indicano che la riduzione dell’imposta sul reddito delle persone fisiche è più orientata alla crescita economica rispetto alla riduzione dell’imposta sul reddito delle società. Inoltre, se la riduzione dell’imposta sul reddito delle persone fisiche è finanziata con l’introduzione di un’imposta sul carbonio sulle attività economiche, non vi è alcun danno alla crescita economica e si crea un beneficio per l’ambiente. Infine, il terzo capitolo mira a valutare l’impatto delle politiche attuate dal governo per sostenere le imprese in periodi di crisi, in modo da ridurre i vincoli di liquidità e aumentare la resilienza. Si articola lungo due linee d’intervento: in una prima fase, attraverso un modello di equilibrio economico generale, gli impatti economici di uno shock possono essere valutati, senza escludere gli effetti su altri settori dell’economia. A differenza dei lavori precedenti, l’efficacia delle politiche attuate dal governo e suscettibili di migliorare la liquidità delle imprese è valutata attraverso un modello CGE dinamico dal punto di vista finanziario, in grado di cogliere anche le variazioni delle attività e delle passività finanziarie dei settori istituzionali. Vengono prese in considerazione due politiche: in primo luogo, la riduzione dei contributi sociali a carico dei datori di lavoro, volta a ridurre il cuneo fiscale, che ha un impatto sulla componente di conto economico della liquidità. In secondo luogo, l’aumento delle garanzie statali concesse attraverso il Fondo di garanzia per le PMI, che mirano a facilitare l’ottenimento di crediti e, pertanto, ad incidere sulla componente di liquidità legata al credito bancario. La seconda fase del lavoro prevede l’integrazione del modello CGE con la banca dati ORBIS, in modo da avere la possibilità di valutare in che modo i risultati settoriali derivanti dal modello CGE incidono sui margini di liquidità a livello di settore. Quanto più ampi sono i margini, tanto più le industrie sono resilienti agli shock esogeni. I risultati indicano che l’attuazione di politiche a livello settoriale consentirebbe di ottenere maggiori benefici per l’intero sistema economico.openD'ANDREA SILVIAD'Andrea, Silvi