Hard-to-Measure Goods and Services

The celebrated economist Zvi Griliches's entire career can be viewed as an attempt to advance the cause of accuracy in economic measurement. His interest in the causes and consequences of technical progress led to his pathbreaking work on price hedonics, now the principal analytical technique available to account for changes in product quality. Hard-to-Measure Goods and Services, a collection of papers from an NBER conference held in Griliches's honor, is a tribute to his many contributions to current economic thought. Here, leading scholars of economic measurement address issues in the areas of productivity, price hedonics, capital measurement, diffusion of new technologies, and output and price measurement in "hard-to-measure" sectors of the economy. Furthering Griliches's vital work that changed the way economists think about the U.S. National Income and Product Accounts, this volume is essential for all those interested in the labor market, economic growth, production, and real output.

Ernst R. Berndt is the Louis B. Seley Professor of Applied Economics at the MIT Sloan School of Management and director of the Program on Technological Progress and Productivity Measurement at the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Charles R. Hulten is professor of economics at the University of Maryland, chairman of the executive committee of the Conference on Research in Income and Wealth, and a research associate of the NBER.