12 Real, Nominal or Hedonic Numbers?

The raw data are important for economic accounts. This is because already processed statistical data are more or less distorted. The theory calculates in principle with nominal figures which are not adjusted by chain indices or other statistical methods to the needs of a countrys statistics. If the official data on GDP and capital stock were processed in exactly the same way, e.g. by the same inflation adjustment, then it does not matter for the capital coefficient K/Y since the effect is cut out .

However uncomfortable data are given, if the values of GDP and capital stock were adjusted according to different methodologies. In particular, the international comparison is very problematic because there is not a really uniform collection and handling of economic numbers worldwide. This is particularly important when inflation data are hedonised, and even worse, with figures for the GDP in the hedonic case. For since in the latter case the data of the capital stock are not affected, the actual capital coefficient is significantly distorted.

Hedonic baskets are generally algorithms that are not bijective. The exact algorithms and the so important raw data mostly stay in the unknown and are usually not published understandable. The data from shopping baskets can not be readily calculated back to their summands of the weighted sum (10.3), even if the individual weighting factors are known. A recalculation of the raw data from official data is often impossible in an exact manner and in some cases one can only estimate the raw nominal values needed for computation.

In the future the required data should be provided world-wide in an integrated manner. We will show that then the world economy will be predictable with high precision.