normative

Data disseminators should label projections and meta-data

Data disseminators like the World Bank should label their products correctly with meta-data—marking with a star data that are actually projections rather than observations, and providing a product declaration noting, for example, that Ghana's revised level estimate is reliable while Nigeria's unrevised-since-1990 estimate may be off by 100%.

normativepending

Speaker

Morten Jerven

Evidence Quote

there should be a double star on data that are actually not data but just projections. And there should be a product declaration which tells you that actually in Ghana they just revised their GDP series, so their level estimate is probably quite reliable, whereas that GDP estimates which we here publish side by side for Nigeria has not been revised since the year 1990 and is probably off by about 100%.

Source

Morten Jerven on Measuring African Poverty and ProgressEconTalk
Created: 6/13/2026, 12:25:58 AM

My Notes

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