Documenting the statistical editing process with process tables,a case study of the Luxembourg Financial Accounts

Abstract

This paper discusses a way to document the statistical editing process with process tables. Work on process tables for official economic statistics has so far focussed on high level aggregates like Gross National Income (GNI), but here they are presented for every item of the Financial Accounts statistics, i.e. the financial part of the National Accounts. A more widespread use of process tables for official statistics may have been hampered by difficulties with their interpretation and by the costs of producing them. This paper first tries to give process tables a theoretical foundation by generalizing their concept to all statistics. Then it is shown how we have integrated them at the Luxembourg Central Bank (BCL) into our compilation system for the Financial Accounts statistics. However, some issues remain such as a certain arbitrariness in the definition of the starting point and the resulting limited comparability of process tables. It is argued that process tables provide both an important quality management tool for statistics compilers and a quality assessment tool for end-users. At present, more experience with process tables and feedback from users is needed to answer the question to what extent they could be disseminated to other potential users.