Page 31 - The Importance of Common Metrics for Advacing Social Science Theory and Research

The Importance of Common Metrics for Advancing Social Science Theory and Research: A Workshop Summary
http://www.nap.edu/catalog/13034.html

MEASUREMENT IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES 19

private institution, the NBER charter incorporates appreciation for the ex-
plicit connection between facts and policy, emphasis on scientific principles
and impartiality, and the expectation that the bureau should abstain from
making recommendations on policy (Fabricant, 1984).
As recounted by Willis, the first NBER project can be considered a
case study of professionalization in the production of standard measures.
National income measurement is based on a close connection between eco-
nomic theory and the definition of the measurement tasks. In the 1930s,
the project moved to the newly formed Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA)
in the U.S. Department of Commerce, national income accounts became
part of the official statistics of the United States, and the methodology was
adopted by other countries around the world. Willis noted the explicit at-
tempt, first in the founding of the NBER itself and later in the incorporation
of this work into the government, to make the production of the data as
resistant as possible to political and other pressures.
In addition to BEA, Willis counted the Census Bureau, the Bureau of
Labor Statistics, and others as federal statistical agencies committed to the
collection of objective data free of partisanship and advocacy. He recalled
various crises in which professionals in statistical agencies have stood their
ground, refusing to manipulate a measure, such as the unemployment rate,
for political advantage. A case in point can be seen in the advice given by
Francis Walker—the superintendent of the 1870 census, the founding com-
missioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the inaugural president of the
American Economic Association, and a vice president of the National Acad-
emy of Sciences—to the first commissioner of the Massachusetts Bureau of
Labor Statistics (Walker, 1877: vii-viii as cited in Prewitt, 1987):
Your office has only to prove itself superior to partisan dictation and to the
seductions of theory, in order to command the cordial support of the press
and the body of citizens. . . . I have strong hopes that you will distinctively
and decisively disconnect [the bureau] from politics.

Measurement in Economic Life
In elaborating on the connection between theory and policy, Willis
turned next to measurement in economic life. People enter exchanges only if
they believe they are getting more than they give. Just as standardized mea-
surement of physical quantities and monetary values have ancient origins
(see Bohrnstedt, 2010), so do the actions of private actors and sovereigns
to subvert the standards, or capitalize on asymmetric information, for their
own advantage.
Willis pointed to measurement of gross domestic product (GDP) as
the canonical example of standardized measurement in economics. GDP is

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